We were early for the appointment and decided to stop by the roadside to have a drink . Although the weather was rather hot and dry, these attap sheds were able to provide us with a cool and comfortable refuge.
The drink counter – apart from the 2 jars on the right with green lids (containing pickles), you can have your choice of any 2 items in the other jars to have in your drink : logan, young coconut, coloured jellies, pineapple, attap seeds, cincau, red syrup, etc etc. These drinks cost 10baht each ( ~ RM1) which was very reasonably priced.
My selection : pineapple and young coconut. Apart from being a bit too sweet, this was rather nice.. Bliss…nice cool drink, soft breeze , ayam selama ( those short stunted chicken species) running around our attap shed… I almost forgot that I was here for work..
We drove from Trang to Hat Yai in our rented car …umm…might be misleading, I wasn’t in any way part of the driving team, my contribution to the journey was : to supply sweets ( brought all the way from Malaysia) and also to occasionally buy my fellow travelers ice cream at the 7-11 when we stop for ‘washroom inspection ‘ at the petrol stations . Just in case you are wondering about petrol prices in Thailand, please see pix below, the 2 figures at the top are for diesel and the others for RON95 and the more premium grade stuff…
We drove on the long and windy roads, sometimes uphill , lotsa greenery… and EH ! A restaurant popped up from the middle of nowhere ! why got restaurant here one ? there were 4-5 cars parked at the entrance and 1 with a Malaysian license plate.
This area is called Khao Pubba ( Khao = mountain , Pubba =many layers / folding) . The ambiance was nice, you can get a good view of the greens and the mountains, strong breeze, solid wooden furniture to dine on , the air smelled fresh and clean..
I had fried rice with chicken (50Baht), a bit like yong chow fried rice. the deep fried chicken meat were tasty but there weren’t that many of them in the rice. The fried rice was average and a bit dry but the chicken was nice.
One of my fellow traveler had white rice with chicken and egg and commented that this was Ok. the chicken looked kinda spicy to me
I was rather surprised that after the rice, 3 plates with steaks arrived at our table…and I was reminded that 2 of these guys eat 2 main course for lunch. I asked them how was the blackpepper steak – they didn’t reply but point to their empty plate and lick their lips. So, I guess this was good guarrr..
These fruit salad came with the steaks. Pineapple and honey dew in light mayo and a bit of lime , served on top of a nest of cabbage and carrot shreds. The guys felt a bit guilty that they were having seconds while i was sitting there, with nothing to do, except stare at them eating, so they offerred me a bowl of salad to take my eyes off their steaks. This was very tasty
And this nicely cut pineapple was on the house.
The meal : 3 rice plus 3 steaks and mineral water : 740Baht . which I thought was rather reasonable.