Phi Phi Island - Aaron's first taste of Asia

Shortly after Aaron arrived we whisked off to Thailand. $0.01 flights and 1.5 hours later, we back to a place that I hadn't been in 3 years. Phi Phi island, off the West coast of Thailand, is a beautiful site replete with limestone cliffs and pure white beaches. It was devastated by the tsunami in 2004 but quickly rebuilt due to lots of aid. There are now various tsunami routes leading to higher ground all over the tiny island. It has expanded greatly, even since 2007, but it is still a piece of paradise.

Some things never change...

Boats. These puppies brought you from one beach to another. Even the black smoke spewing out of their car-modified-for-boat engines didn't ruin the novelty of these boats.

Buckets. (yes, that's $10 for a mickey of whiskey, ice, any mixer. and 10 straws...expensive by Thai standards)

Beach. White, luxurious sand, blue, fish-filled water, quiet, empty beaches. What more can one ask for? This is more or less the only picture I took of the beach (bad Kim), there are a couple of Aaron and I but we look like awkward penpals so we opted to not include them in this blog.

Banana Pancakes. pan fried with a pat of butter, crispy to perfection, filled with those tiny sweet bananas, and drizzled with condensed milk. (oh, and accompanied with a refreshing and delightful coconut shake, Aaron's snack of choice)

Our 2 hour ferry ride over from Phuket island resulted in us getting burnt (my first. and hopefully my last.)

Some lessons about life we learnt on Phi Phi:

Alcohol makes us all animal lovers

Ladyboys are only slightly closer to men than woman in eating ability


Bugs are bigger in tropical countries

By now you're probably wondering what we did on Phi Phi...we stayed at amazingly quiet bungalows on lesser traveled beaches, we did some touristy shopping on the main beach, 'haggling' with the store owners for beer logo'd t shirts and beach wear, we snorkeled reefs in the clear blue waters just steps from our bungalow doors, we camped on Maya beach, where the infamous movie "The Beach" was filmed, and, of course, we ate.

Our first bungalow was a bit fancy for our liking, it came with a flat screen tv that seemed stupid when you had a beach 3 steps from your doorstep. However, the semi-outdoor shower was a super bonus.

A buffet breakfast was included, complete with toast, stir fry, homemade omelettes, and chicken wings. And those little hot dogs. I never eat hot dogs at home, but put me in a foreign country and I can't get enough. Maybe it's the familiarity of the food. Or, maybe deep down inside I really love hot dogs and can justify them as "eating local food" when I'm traveling. Either way, I don't care. They're in abundance in asia, and I'm eating them in all forms!

Not only was our bungalow on the beach, so was the restaurant:

Our last bungalow was unbelievable. It was a couple beaches down from our first, on which there was only our bungalow company. It was family run, friendly, quiet, and right on the beach. There was only one place to eat, but thankfully it was fantastic.


We did lots of reading on our porch.

We ate the requisite green curries, Tom Yums, and Pad Thais, with some surprise dishes mixed in between.

On our second night, we took a camping trip to Phi Phi Ley (Maya Beach), a small island that is a national park just a boat ride away from the Phi Phi Don. During the day it's quite packed with tourists, but the company we went with is the only company with permission to bring in visitors to camp. So, after a stop to snorkel and play with fish, we landed on this island, just before sunset.

We had the entire beach to ourselves (a group of about 20), some people played soccer, some people explored the far end of the beach, some people enjoyed the sunset. We played with sea cucumbers.


Mine went limp. Aaron wasn't sure if he entirely enjoyed the experience.

After our echinoderm fun the sun went down and the party started. We were fed 'til stuffed and then the free buckets were passed around...Free buckets led to paid-for-buckets which led to us making friends with a fantastic French couple who love living in China, which led to us making friends with one of the locals. This particular local was enjoying some hermit crab racing action, which we somehow got involved with and ended up running all over the island looking for our own special racing crab.

First (?) bucket

After an impromptu lesson on how to pick up the big guys, we were all over it (these guys were all over the island)

While most of our hermit crabs kept pinching us, Aaron formed a special bond with his who seemed to be quite fond of him. We were all jealous.

Aaron, Marion and Erwin cheering on their crabs on our race course. Marion was enjoying a beverage, Aaron was lovingly watching his crab cross the finish line, and Erwin was giving his crab a pep talk for the next race.

Eventually we noticed the ocean was lighting up...it was subtle, but there. PHOSPHORESCENCE! Obviously a 2am dip was needed.

But first, bbq'd wings, more buckets, and a fire show from our hosts.

Eventually we passed out in sleeping bags on the beach. I think that us and the French couple were the only ones to get any sleep. The others all slept in a big bunch further up the beach, which was not a great idea since half the people were freaked out by the rats running around the beach. This led to multiple panic attacks throughout night which didn't bother us on the far end. Perhaps we should've been worried though; when we woke up the next morning, there were rat tracks around our sleeping bags...

We finally ended our camping trip with a semi-hidden sunrise, good long discussions with various groups over breakfast, visit from a large reptile, and a final snorkel on the way out. It was a beautiful and relaxing couple of days!

How many meals can you pack into 5 days?

So far Aaron's Singapore portion of the visit has comprised mainly of me searching out impossible to find or non-existent food stands, with Aaron in tow, heat stroked and ready to eat whatever foods I put in front of him. We have quickly become one with the culture here:

A: What's the next mystery dish Kim is going to make me eat? K: Yay! We're both in Singapore!

We eat about 9-10 new things a day (sometimes more) ranging from singapore dessert specialties to chinese noodles to malay soups to 7-11 deep fried snacks to fresh fruit drinks, but for brevity's sake here's some of our more memorable meals (and many of them have been memorable...):

Aaron's first breakfast here turned out to be one of his favourites. I'm not sure if it was the kaya on the toast (a sweet green jam/honey like thing), the soft boiled egg with soya sauce, the black coffee made with a sock, or the surprise pat of butter that comes with every piece of toast, but he really loves it. And as a result has started most of his days in Singapore here with enough butter to fuel his long days (and probably many beyond that).

I've been trying my best to get Aaron to enjoy one of the strangest fruits in the world: The stinky durian. What better way to test the waters than try it on a huge pile of ice, filled with red beans and other mysterious beasts. This stand was suggested by my food guide to be one of the best. When we went to go buy one the stall owner took one look at Aaron and asked dubiously, "Are you sure you want one?? It's really concentrated."

He was right. Aaron is still on the fence as to whether he loves it or hates it.

We've of course been eating as many things on sticks as possible:

Whilst on another failed food stall search for satay we came across an awesome old school hawker centre in Chinatown and opted for sweet and sour fish head...

Which we demolished...neither of us dared to eat the eyeball. Or the mystery organ.

A: I thought we mastered wings, but the Chinese can lay claim to that. Their wings are slow cooked over open charcoal and fire. In fact, it is one persons job to cook the wings.

A: Some random buns. Kim's was green and somewhat fruity. She made me get the chicken floss bun with a salty custard filling. It was weird but enjoyable. K: Hey, I didn't make you get anything. If I were to make you get a bun, it would've been a spicy hot dog bun.

And the best food of all time....

Singapore's national dish - chili crab. The thick broth is a mixture of chilis, tomatoes, and lots of eggs. You choose from a variety of crabs (we got Sri Lankan) AND it's served with little fried buns to sop up the sauce! 10/10! We almost didn't eat here (No Signboard Seafood) because it was more than the usual $3 per dish, but thank the food gods we did. We also ordered some dim sum because we didn't know the dish would be so massive.

I may have to go eat an entire one of these for myself when Aaron leaves.

Next post: our trip to Thailand. Beach! Sun! Food! Camping!

Meet the Ongs!

A few weeks ago I had the chance to go have an extended lunch at my grandma's place. 4 hours of 20 some odd members of family coming and going (I have lots of cousins! And they all have partners! So I can't actually remember who is related to me and who isn't! No matter. They were all nice.)

My grandma's short term memory is getting a bit thin, so she doesn't remember my last visit 5 years ago. So really, the last time she saw me was when I was 3. She kept saying over and over again to my dad (in Chinese), "This is your daughter?? You have a daughter? She's so big!"

Some of my family (grandma on left):

It appears I was the only one drinking beer.

Most of the time we stood by the window and watched people walk in and out of the house. This is my grandma's usual hang-out (she's in there somewhere, sitting on her chair)



We also ate. 5 meals. In a row.







Meal 1: Roti prata (curry with delicious chewy roti bread...a local favourite (I love it as a late night snack))













Meal 2: Fish head soup (I didn't eat much of it because I couldn't figure out how to actually get the fish meat off the damn thing)



Meal 3: Sushi made by my aunt (one of them had really large tentacles)


Meal 4: 'Canadian' pizza (in honour of me!)
(At this exact moment I was thinking, "Oh my god, it's exactly like Canada! But with canned mushrooms!")


Most of them have never seen snow, so I invited them to Canada. They sounded keen. You may be seeing 20 Ongs on my doorstep next year!


P.S. this site is driving me crazy. It's great in that it's free, but it's an ongoing struggle of "publish, edit, publish, edit" because you can't get a good preview of what the page will actually look like...the formatting makes no sense to me. Anyone have a better suggestion?