Day 3 - Heaven in a bowl

Woke up at 5am to the news that exit polls were predicting a massive win for the Tories, a humiliating defeat for Corbyn and best of all Jo Swinson to lose her seat. I then spent the next 4 hours monitoring the results as they came in on the BBC website.

Around 9am, we had breakfast, Jackie had fish curry, then set up camp on the only 2 sun beds beside the pool at the rear of our hotel. Here I wrote my blog for Day 2 and we caught up with some admin & planned our movements after Chiang Mai.

The result of our mornings endeavour was that we booked 2 train seats for the 10 hour journey from Chiang Mai to Ayuthaya on Tuesday morning. We have already been allocated our seats & Jackie is fretting because it doesn’t look like we are sitting together. We had intended to travel on the Monday, but worryingly the only train available got into Ayuthaya at 3.00am.

As a result we have extended our stay in our current hotel for an extra night.
Through the staff on reception at our hotel we have also booked a hire car for Saturday & a short cruise on the Mae Ping River on Monday.

We have researched accommodation in Ayuthaya for 3-4 nights and discovered that the websites were showing that no trains were available to take us then on to Bangkok!

Just after 2pm we headed out for lunch & decided upon a restaurant called Pakorn’s Kitchen, which we had seen people queuing to get in to on our 1st night. We sat at an outside table & ordered 2 beers, but were told they weren’t allowed to sell alcohol between 2 & 5pm. Seeing our disappointment, the waitress asked us if we wouldn’t mind drinking out of mugs- not at all. She returned with 2 large tea mugs filled with frothing Chang Beer.

In their food menu was an article stating that CNN had declared the Thai Massaman Curry as being one of the Top 50 dishes in the World. It wasn’t clear if it was their Massaman curry or just Massaman curry in general. Either way they were clearly proud of their Massaman curry, so I ordered a beef one - as I always say “When in Rome.........." Jackie ordered a pork & chilli dish.

After having our mugs surreptitiously refilled, our lunch arrived. The curry arrived in a huge bowl with chunks of succulent beef. The sauce was utterly heavenly and very nearly forced me into an involuntary Greg Wallace impersonation. This dish most definitely features in my Top 10 meals I have ever eaten & one that I am unlikely to ever forget.

Jackie’s lunch was also nice, but she enhanced it with several spoonfuls of my special sauce. At the end of our meal, Jackie tried to discreetly steal the cloth pouch our cutlery had arrived in by sliding her specs into it. She got well & truly caught by the ladies on the next table who were laughing, pointing at her & exaggeratedly pretending to zip their mouths. We paid up & managed to evade capture!

We then took a stroll around the backstreets in the vicinity of our hotel & ultimately found ourselves in the centre of a bustling locals food market with delicious looking stalls, apart from the one that sold pig bones that were all piled up with skulls & jaw bones clearly visible. We had a beer at a roadside shack to observe the hustle & bustle of local life.

Later after getting ready for the evening, we headed out into the Old City without a specific plan. We entered the Old City via the Chiang Mai Gate & strolled around until we found Restaurant Kaow Tom 1B on Soi Ratchadumnoen. It was heaving with people including local Thais, so it must be good. TripAdvisor gives it rave reviews.

We grabbed a vacant table at the front & ordered. Jackie had a prawn chilli dish & I ordered fried kale with crispy pork. Unfortunately it all arrived at the same time as our chicken satay starter, which is one of my pet hates. The satay was good, but both main courses were bland. I didn’t like to think which bits of the pig my slivers of pork were from, but it felt like a Bush Tucker Trial for a second day on the trot!

On the way home, we stopped at Chiang Mai Gate Night Market & purchased a Nutella & banana crepe, which was not as good as the Thai pancakes, then finished with a nightcap at our local bar.

Song of the Day - My Country by New Model Army. (Dedicated to the General Election Result).Read more