One of our favorite things about traveling is being able to try new foods, especially tropical fruits. This is a mangosteen. They have a hard purple shell with white flesh in sections inside. The fruit is very soft and tastes like a cross between a nectarine and strawberry. One or two of the sections have a big seed inside, so there’s really not much fruit in there…. But it’s yummy! Our hotel in Bangkok had signs everywhere that said “NO MANGOSTEEN, NO DURIAN” – I think because mangosteen is messy and durian is stinky.
After swimming this morning we drove to a beach North of us called Banana Beach. The forty-five minute drive became almost two hours due to traffic and construction. Google’s alternative route led to a closed road because of more construction, so we had to wait to get back onto the main road again. Gave us plenty of time to appreciate the fact that we don’t have power lines like this in our neighborhood at home…
Online it said that parking for Banana Beach was on the street and hard to find, but when we got there we found a dirt and gravel parking lot (and when we went back several days later it was being paved!!) and found a spot no problem. This beach is a small cove and off the beaten path so it’s not super crowded. We also liked that it’s surrounded by jungle trees instead of a busy street so it seems even quieter on the beach. We love that no one is blasting obnoxious music either – seems like that is taboo in Thailand.
We hadn’t eaten lunch before arriving at the beach, so we were glad to see a beach restaurant. The first picture below shows the restaurant kitchen in the background – pretty primitive! Would you be brave enough to eat here? This was actually a pretty fancy place – they put orchids on the plates and had real silverware. Three of us ordered chicken sandwiches, the other three ordered banana pancakes. The pancakes came out pretty quickly and the little kids gobbled them up. Littlest girls said “These things are yummy! Even with the banana!” haha… that is what you ordered kiddo! We let them go play on the sand where we could see them while we waited for our food for another half hour. It would have been fine, except that everyone around us was smoking. Gross. European tourists smoke A LOT.
The water here is perfectly clear and so warm. We lucked out by finding a pool tube abandoned in the parking lot and had a ton of fun floating on the waves.
Superman & Spud went to explore the rocks on the side of the cove and found some of the craziest mudskipper fish. They called the rest of us over to see them too. Sadly within 5 seconds Littlest girl slipped on a rock and got a bad cut on her knee. I carried her back up to our beach towels and used bottled water and napkins snagged from the restaurant to clean her up. Any deeper and we would have been leaving for stitches… but luckily that wasn’t necessary, and I had a mini first-aid kit in my backback with neosporin and bandaids. I butterflied it together and got her feeling better and resting.
Spud, Superman & I took a walk to the other side of the cove and found even more of the mudskippers. They are small fish, maybe 3-5 inches long, that spend most of their lives outside of the water, climbing and jumping on the rocks. They keep a pouch of water behind their gills and when they blink their eyes roll back to get moist too. When their skin starts drying out they will fling themselves off the rocks and into the water. Our animal loving boy was absolutely fascinated!
While the girls were resting, playing in the water and making sand sculptures, Spud & Superman played some football. A man joined them in tossing the ball back and forth and said he’d always wanted to play American Football. Superman asked him where he was from and he said “Malta.” Superman has been waiting his whole life to meet someone from the island of Malta! He said “Me too!” The man, Marc, was so surprised and started asking what part of Malta Superman is from. Superman said “Malta, Idaho!” They had a fun conversation about the two Maltas, and Marc asked how many people live there… When he heard it’s only a few hundred people he said “Wow, you’re more rare than I am!”
We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon on the beach and watched the sun go down. What a gorgeous day!
Gotta love sketchy beach swings too.
On our way back to the car we passed by the little creek that runs from the hills down to the ocean. There were two women squatting on rocks on the side of the creek doing laundry. We realized that they were from the restaurant, and what they were washing out were the towels and washcloths that they use to wipe tables and do dishes. uuuuuugh. I can’t even tell you how filthy that water was… Disgusting. So glad we didn’t get sick.
We ended up at a street market where we found a bunch of different foods for dinner – fruit smoothies, strange flavors of pancakes, kabob wraps (shawarma chicken), bbq pork on sticks, teriyaki chicken and rice, and mango roti. Gotta be adventurous!
We also stopped by a fruit market on the way home and bought a little piece of Durian fruit – it’s the one that smells like stinky socks and you either like it or hate it. Spoiler alert: we all hated it (Superman tolerated it better than all of us combined).
It’s mushy in texture, a little stringy, and the flavor is just like it smells. We all ate one bite. Superman finished it off and said he didn’t mind it too much. Blech. For some reason, even though there is Durian EVERYWHERE, it’s the most expensive fruit we found and every single shop wanted to sell it by the huge piece. Superman was able to split a quarter piece with another tourist who just wanted to try it too. Perfect timing! It ended up being $100 baht- totally worth it for the disgusting experience.
