On Monday we hung around the hotel till about 2pm. We went to the pool, came back and ordered room service (the fried fish sandwich this time) and then hung out in the lobby to use the less than reliable wifi for a couple of hours.
We took a two-rows to the pier and rode the ferry back to Trat, where Sam’s sister and brother-in-law picked us up.
An hour later we were down by the water again, far north of Koh Chang. We stopped in at a little outdoor seaside restaurant and before I knew it there were plates of seafood on the table. We met up with Sam’s mother and uncle and he treated us to a the biggest seafood spectacle I’ve ever seen.
There was fried grouper, a plate (at least 15) of crabs, a plate of (larger) crab legs, a plate of fried mantis shrimp and a plate of boiled mantis shrimp.
That was when I took pictures. After I took pictures, dug in and got my hands dirty, more food kept coming. A plate of crab fried rice came out, followed by tom luck soup, followed by a plate of prawn. They brought out a ramekin of garlic butter for me when I said that the hot chili sauce was a bit too much.
It became clear the goal was to finish as much as possible. I had to have eaten at least: 1 fried mantis shrimp, 3 boiled mantis shrimp, 1 crab, 1 cup fried rice, 20% of the grouper and two prawn. Then I decided to eat the fish head.
Then it was revealed that we could finish it off with ice cream.
Somehow we managed to cram that in as well.
Afterwards we went to the nearby pier.
In the photo that dark island in the distance is actually Koh Chang. They explained that it was currently raining there, so it looks like luck was with us as the rain poured on Koh Chang and Trat both before and after our visit, but not during.
We left the pier and headed to Sam’s Aunt and uncles house (a different uncle than the one that just treated us to the seafood dinner) where Sam’s uncle rebandaged my toe and put a waterproof coating on it. In addition to owning a clinic with her husband, Sam’s aunt keeps a warehouse for birds on the second floor of their house (think of it as a small upstairs garage) in order to sell birds nests to the Chinese to make soup with. I was told a kilogram of birds nest can fetch 50,000 baht (about $1,666), but maybe I’m remembering it wrong. On the ground floor they had a giant fish pool. The fish pool only exists to house fish that have grown too big for the massive tank inside the house that takes up an entire wall.
