Wednesday 12 October 2011

Pancakes on the run.....


'Twas the night before Big Game Fishing meaning an early start and no hangover….wrong on both counts!!!  We ended up having a meal with mad Austrian Micky (who we were going fishing with the next morning) and his wife Neet.  She is one mean cook!  You don’t get a menu when you arrive up, just asked what do you want and then she tells you what she’s cooking that particular evening!  It was pork, and so keen was she for us to sample it, she took us into her little kitchen at the back of the property to watch it sizzling away in the oven!!!  She made special Austrian/Thai dumplings to go with it and it was spectacular!  May have to take a few cooking lessons off her!  Dessert was banana pancakes but not made in her kitchen.  A motorbike completed with mobile pancake stall attached like a sidecar went whizzing by the end of road and Micky let out a mahoosive whistle and flagged him down.  The skill of the pancake man was amazing – Dan watched him as he made pancakes with every bit of skill as a master-pizza maker had and they were delicious!

We set off the next morning, early for us at 8am.  We were picking up the boat just a 5-minute drive away and went in Micky’s car.  On the journey, and to our horror, he started driving on the opposite side of the road (Thais drive on the same side as us normally!)  We asked what he was doing and Dan told him he wasn’t in Austria now – he said the other side of the road was bumpy and full of pot holes and he didn’t like it!!!  Fair enough reason I suppose!!!

We were on a traditional Thai fishing boat, just us three and one captain, Bom.  The fish were biting straight away but it was fishing without rods (sounds like a Westlife song title!!).  The fishing line was just that, a line and a hook dropped over the side with a weight and some squid bait.  None of the fish that were caught were massive, but they were plentiful – about 50 in all!  After we stopped for lunch on an island called Koh Tan, I wanted to sunbathe, so got dropped off on a little remote island and did just that – THREE hours later they came back for me.  It was a bit eery being on an island knowing that it was devoid of any other humans!!!

Despite great plans to dine on our catch that night, after a shower and supposedly a nap, we woke up several hours late, too late for dinner or socializing so we made do with chicken noodle soup and flat bread!!!

The next few days were spent at our little beach and pondering on our next port of call.  Plan was to go to Koh  Phangan for a month but being a much, much smaller island we thought that maybe a month was going to be too much and as we haven’t even really dipped our toes in Ko Samui yet, decided to find a more permanent home on Samui.  We met a girl at our local beach bar who has an English fiancé, Mason – who was currently taxi-driving in Essex!!!!  She knew of someone who had some apartments to rent so off we scooted with her on our scooter, she on hers complete with her two dogs, one front and one back!  What a balancing act!  The apartments were up near the local waterfall and elephant park and where lovely and very cheap but not really what we wanted.  We got talking to a Dutchman later in the day who told us that there were apartments going at our little beach so we enquired of the Norweigan owner and he showed us one that he had available and there you have it – Robert’s your father’s brother - we now have a home for the next four months!!!  The address will be Coco Beach, Leamsor, Ko Samui!  How cool is that!

Dan, as you know is now a fully paid-up member of the Guild of Koh Samui Fishermen and after several catches and offering them up to Neet, at the local restaurant, she knows us sufficiently well now to tell us that they were too small to eat and they are used as bait without fear of offending us!!!  So I have had to learn a new skill – squid gutting and filleting!  After a very informative video on uTube I made my first, and if I say so myself, very good attempt at gutting and filleting our squid.  Chop head off, avoiding sharp beak – Done!,  Slit body down the side avoiding ink sack – Done!  Scrap out innerds and membrane – Done.  Chop up into strips ready for bait hooking!  Done!  Gordon Ramsay – step aside sonny – there’s a new girl in town!

Our weekly night out loomed – a lift into town with Colin, the landlord meant we could both have a couple of beers without worrying about the riding the scooter – not a good idea for either driver or pillion to be pissed on these roads!  Dan had been threatening for about a week or so to get his hair cut and we found a hairdressers in Lamai that was willing to do just that for £2!  Now sporting a newly revealed white hair line and about a millimeter of hair all over, I have a skinheaded fiancé!!!!  Dan thinks it shows up what he considers his receding hair line and grey hairs – what nonsense!  They were there before!!! 

Take care all M&D x


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