Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [67]
The wine does make a good match for our food selections. To start, we share yaam poo mim thod, fried softshell crab, and a tangy green mango salad with shallots, chile paste, and lemongrass. A nearby aquaculture farm raises the meaty crabs, as briny and fresh as any just taken in the wild. For a main course, Bill gets gaeng paad gai, a spicy southern jungle curry with chicken, full of contrasting flavors and textures. Cheryl opts for goong paad bai graprow, stir-fried shrimp with hot basil, chile, and oyster sauce. Both light up our night.
Breakfast the next morning is almost as tasty. Inspired by a welcome gift of chocolate cookies that she devoured yesterday, Cheryl tries some of the other baked goods, a small sour-cherry muffin and a pain au chocolat, supplemented by a bowl of tropical fruits, red currants, and strawberries topped with yogurt. Bill considers the “Phuket” breakfast with rice porridge and Chinese sausage salad but chooses instead a hash of the local black crab. Baked rather than skillet- or wok-fried, as he thinks a hash should be, it’s a little meek until he requests and adds the chile-and-fish sauce named nam pla prik.
Changing out of our swimsuits, we leave reluctantly after the lunch in our sala, taking a complimentary Amanpuri limousine from the quiet, relaxed setting to our next hotel, the Amari Coral in the much busier Patong Beach area. Our driver speaks English well, so we ask about the tragic tsunami’s impact and the island’s recovery progress. “Phuket is mostly back, and visitors are returning, but residents will never outlive their memories of the day.” He illustrates by relating his family’s experience. “My wife and I were both working at different hotels. I didn’t find out for hours that she was safe. Amanpuri let me go home to check on our house and nothing was there. Nothing at all. Everything washed out to sea.” Cheryl timidly inquires if the rest of their family survived okay. “No, two cousins died and also some good friends. Most people lost loved ones.” Each of us expresses sympathy, but we feel feeble in our efforts.
A conventional beach hotel similar to thousands of others in the world, the Amari Coral sits at the south end of Patong on a sliver of sand not connected to the bustling main beach. The location allows us to walk at will into town—the restaurant, nightlife, and shopping headquarters of Phuket—but to escape the crowds at other times. The reception desk checks us in and escorts us through a maze of low-rise wings to our ocean-view deluxe room. With tsunami stories fresh in our minds, it’s a little unsettling to see we’ll be sleeping forty feet from the shore.
The tourist literature in the room informs us in detail about the activities available for guests, none in the least appealing to us. Many visitors apparently enjoy taking boat trips to secluded beaches and smaller islands, such as Phi Phi Don, where you will be “amazing” to witness monkeys “leaving” on the hillside, and Phi Phi Lae, the movie set for Leonardo di Caprio’s The Beach. Others seem to seek out ATV thrills, diving, sailing and parasailing, sea canoeing, waterskiing, and touring underwater on a Yellow Submarine. None of the brochures offers anything remotely related to Thai life and culture.
After this dispiriting reading, we head into town in the late afternoon for a firsthand look at the hub of the hubbub. It doesn’t set new standards for tacky—impossible to do any longer in a world awash in it—but it certainly reeks of banality. In most respects, it’s Just Beach Town Anywhere, capable of being transplanted to Florida or Mexico without anyone noticing the difference. Scads of