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Woke up early and packed to be ready for mid morning departure by Taxi to the airport (Subang vs KLIA - its a smaller more regional airport, so hopefully easier to navigate) later today.
Headed out to initial breakfast back at the IMBI Market area hoping that some of the other stands would be opened. On the way there I took a few photos. Walked across the street
from "Hotel Homie", which is an inside family joke!
Made it back to the market and was happy that there was a long stand at a line that was serving something interesting! Long lines usually mean good food.
In this case there were many items to pick from that one used tongs to put into a little metal bowl. The "chef" then grabbed the bowl when he was ready to prepare
your meal as well as a paper plate and started cutting things up and throwing them onto the plate. He started with some rice noodles that he chopped as a major
item on one side of the plate then grabbed my bowl and chopped, diced or sliced things up and added them around the noodles. Then he doled out two kinds of red sauce...
one was a slightly spice chili, the other a more sweet red sauce. Then he sprinkled it all with mixed (white and black) sesame. It was really good "comfort food".
I am guessing as to what I added to the bowl, but along the lines of fried tofu flats (like of like wonton wrappers). One was fried up with sesame, and the other I think was
two layers stuffed with some fish paste. Rolled tofu inside of which was some pork and spice mix -- like a sausage but fried tofu as wrapper material. Eggplant chunks sliced open
and filled up a bit with fish paste. Big chunks of tofu also sliced up and filled with a fish paste smear. Big red pepper (not super hot though) with a little fish paste inside.
After that yummy meal I looked for the stand from yesterday with the crepe/egg/corn item but he wasn't around this morning :-( Too bad as that would have
made a nice "dessert" for this meal!
Headed back towards the hotel and took a few shots to try and show off the contrast between the run-down neighborhood area and the high-rise hotels
Checked out and took about a 45 minute taxi ride to Subang airport, which is the smaller (older) airport for Kuala Lumpur. The only weird thing was that drivers side vs passengers side are reversed
from the US here, so it was a little odd with the driver in front on the "right hand side" :-)
Arrived at the airport about 3 hours before my flight and breezed through getting my boarding pass. Grabbed another milk tea before breezing through customs and getting to
my gate area.
Also while waiting for flight I stopped at the one food counter area in the boarding area and bought a turnover. Turned out it was a mutton turnover, which was a surprise,
but that's okay!
Boarded the flight and headed for Koh Sumai. Onboard they served a snack of some apple juice and a little chicken curry bau-- more of a chicken paste curry bau, but it was fine
Once landed breezed through customs. Met "my driver" whom the hotel had arranged to have pick me up and got some THB (money) from an ATM before
hopping into the car and heading to the hotel for check-in. It was about a 20 minute drive and then a "formal check in" where they sit you down in a nice chair,
give you some nice tea, take your info and passport, go off and process it, then come back and walk you to your room. Here's the nice purple tea they gave me
(felt like Alice In Wonderland -- Oh no! I had some of the "drink me!")
The room looked pretty nice and was even larger than my last hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I guess the "drink me!" must be making me smaller? So everything around me looks bigger? Well, maybe not.
Anyway, large room, large lanai, very nice looking.
Unpacked and cleaned up then took a walk around the neighborhood. About a block and a half a way I found a set of stores (touristy) on the ocean side of the
road. Oops! One was selling ice cream and had lilliqoi (passion fruit), so I had to get some:
Walked out to the beach and back towards my hotel. Took some photos of the beach view to the ocean. AMAZING (even by Hawaii standards!!)
And a panoramic shot:
Walked a little further and found a vendor selling grilled fish sticks. Got one with some big prawns on it:
And then I met "someone" who was hoping I would share my meal, but alas I was not willing to. Good dog!
Returned to my hotel and changed to swim wear to take a dip in the ocean in front of the hotel and hang out on lawn chairs they had out there. It was nice,
but there were eventually some loud people so I decided to head back to my room. Discovered a problem with my room in doing so -- turns out I'm right next to
front lobby AND overlook the bar area which has a pool table (which had opened since I'd left). Major noise issue. Ugh! Spoke with front desk and threw some money
at the problem, so while I'm stuck with it tonight they will upgrade me tomorrow to a "villa" for a discounted upgrade charge from the normal. I walked past the private villas
on my back from the beach back to my room and they are much more isolated (way far away from the front and road area, no where near the bar, and far enough from the
pool area in the middle of the property that I should get virtually no noise). Looking forward to it. Here's a picture of that pool area by the way -- lined with elephants!
Rested in my room for a while and then headed out to dinner. Just walked up and down the main street for a while checking places out until I found one which looked and smelled good.
They all tended to have "picture album menus" out front too, which made it easy to browse through and make a choice. The one I picked ended up being run by what appeared to be
a grandmother and her family. Food was very good, but the place was packed and it took a very long time. I was okay with this as I had the other treats earlier in the day, but I was there
for almost 2 hours! Here are some photos of the place. I ended up ordering a whole fried fish, Thai Style (grilled crispy with sweet chili paste sauce on it -- yum), seafood larb (salad with
seafood and a spicy dressing), a mango shake, and mango sticky rice for dessert. It was all wonderful.
This was quite a long meal, and a big battle to eat it all! Here's some of the "destruction" shots:
And the "big picture" of the aftermath! I can't honestly say "and then there was none", because I didn't entirely clean my plates, but for me this was pretty good!
Here are some photos of the staff and the kitchen, which can be seen from the road -- and was the reason I decided on this place
(it was definitely a family run joint!)
By the way, the lady in the picture on the left is the mother/grandmother who ran the place and was taking all the orders and directing. I don't know
what phrase she kept saying -- but she would walk around and loudly say the same thing again and again, even when taking ones order. I think she
only had two major things to say (might have been Thai equivalent of "Yes Honey" and "No, You don't want that").
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