Once a Waitress

Patong, on Phuket island in Thailand, has suffered a fairly hard slap from the hand of tourism. Those that have been there will attest that it’s not really Thai, but some hybrid of fat Russians, mail order brides, sunburned Brits, drunken Australian teenagers and soggy noodles (the latter two with no connection).

On the first day of our hedonistic self directed tour of Phuket, before the novelty of drinking during the day had worn off, we found this little strip mall, down an alleyway off the street with all the bars. We called it ‘bar street’, the street where I discovered the intense alcohol content of deliciously potent Chang Beer. 6.7% is a lot. You’re going to want to soak that up.

It was, obviously, the reproduction Dutch paintings (mixed with Mickey Mouse plastic tablecloths) that sucked us in. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant.

This plate of noodles made the 24 hours spent in Patong worthwhile. Silky, wide rice noodles, fat fresh prawns, the kick of lime and crunch of peanut wrapped in the smokey hint of an overused wok. For $1.75AUD I thought I might get food poisoning. I didn’t.

For the next 10 days I looked everywhere for a plate of noodles as good as these. I never found it. But I did buy a wok.

Tags: Patong, Thailand

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 at 5:53 pm and is filed under melbourne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.