(PICTURE: Huyen on our isolated beach.)
I love Thai Food and couldn't wait to have some in Phuket. One of the features of the bungalow was that it had a supposedly pretty good restaurant. After going for a walk on the beach, Huyen and I had an evening meal. The food though was just okay. I've been to Thailand a few times (and Thai restaurants hundreds of times) and this place just wasn't anything special. I really wanted to love it, especially since it cost more than you would expect a bungalow's restaurant to cost.
Because of this, the next day Huyen and I went out in search of some better and cheaper food. We found just the spot about a ten minute walk from our bungalow. You see, as we had driven in the day before, we saw a handful of food stands by a construction site (they're building a new Holiday Inn near the bungalows). We went to the stands and ended up eating breakfast and lunch there. The food was quite good and totally authentic. The only problem was that it was next to a construction site and more or less a garbage dump. You know, besides the garbage it was great.
Here's the thing though, I felt a little guilty not eating at the bungalow especially since we were the only people staying there! There was another couple the night before but they checked out on our first full day. The restaurant was staffed with three girls who clearly had nothing to do except to cook for us...and we chose to eat elsewhere.
In the afternoon, we decided to have a little picnic and took our papaya salad, chicken skewers and Thai iced tea to the beach. I think the owner was a little peeved that we weren't eating at the restaurant because as soon as we sat down, three of his dogs basically jumped on us. We ended up having to walk quite far down the beach before the dogs would let us eat in peace.
Now all that said, we had planned on eating dinner again at the bungalow restaurant that night. I had specifically asked the owner what time the restaurant serves until and he said just to place our order before 9PM. Well, at 8PM we went to the restaurant and it was totally boarded up. This was a problem since we were starving and the construction site was closed. I wasn't too happy about this turn of events and wanted to say something to the owner who lives in a bungalow next to the restaurant. As we got close to the bungalow though his dogs starting to bark quite fiercely at us. The light was on inside his bungalow so we started yelling his name. And yup, he ignored us.
This was quite stupid on his part because we had planned on paying for two more nights and instead decided to check out the next morning...
