Appearances Can Be Deceptive

Tuesday 26 September

Another day of relaxing around the pool, blogging, puzzling and even reading a bit more of my book – I must try to finish it by the time we leave Koh Samui, to lose a bit more weight from my luggage. We hoped to have lunch at Hemingways, a small bar/café at the other end of the village, but when we wandered there in the early afternoon, we found it was closed on Tuesdays, so we had to adjourn once more to Coffee Junction, for sarnies and shakes. We will get there one day.

We then all relaxed round the pool. Jean and I had just finished a late afternoon swim when Juz and Dave texted us to say they were at Tropical Murphys in Chaweng and were we on way? Well, no - but we soon could be. We changed quickly, hailed a tut-tut at the end of the village, and were soon all sipping cocktails at the Irish bar. .Juz had tried to book a cookery course in Chaweng for this afternoon, but the classes were full, so had arranged to go tomorrow morning to learn to cook yellow Thai curry and fish cakes.

Having supped to our fill, we wandered along Chaweng High Street (well part of it – it is so long it takes more than an hour to walk the whole length oneway) to look at some amulets Juz had found (Colin lost his on our last visit here, and is desperate to replace it), but they weren’t quite right. We found out that they come from Singapore, so we will be seeking them out when we visit there at the end of October. It was then time to decide where to go for dinner.

Whilst ambling we had passed the Chaba Hotel, the Ocean View site, that backed on to Chaweng beach. The hotel was in two sites, one on either side of the road, and this side was very striking art deco style, a tall, white circular fronted building, with a round Greek pergola to one side, which was outlined in bright while lights. The frontage, where a chef was barbequing fresh fish and steaks, was lit with lots of coloured fairy lights, in the trees and around the food preparation area. A large area behind was set out as a restaurant, with a small bar to one side and a ‘performing area’ to the other. It all looked very pretty, like fairyland, so we decided on this venue for the evening.

There were several pointers that should have warned us this wasn’t quite what we had expected – firstly they gave us five menus instead of six, and then came and took one back as they didn’t have enough for another table. Secondly, the wine was less than 3 GBP a carafe. Thirdly the entertainment consisted of a group of six young Thai boys and girls, doing dances from Hawaii, although the three boys did juggle with flamed torches as the climax to the show. It reminded me of the show on the Three Gorges boat, performed by the staff whih was at least entertaining – nobody here seemed to be paying much attention. We did see the performers leaving by car for another venue! Fourthly, there was complete confusion when it came to ordering the meal. First one young lady started taking the orders (Colin ordered his complete meal at this stage). I wanted fresh squid, but she couldn’t understand, and a Thai version of a Maitre D’ came over and explained that four of us wanted fresh fish. We went off to order this from the pavement in the street where we chose our fish and had it weighed. When we returned to the table, another lady was taking Dave’s order, and also asking for our choices for starters and main course. Again we tried to explain, that we had ordered our food from the fish counter, and that another lady had taken Colin’s order. She appeared completely baffled Juz then tried to explain to the by now, even more confused Maitre D’, that we wanted our starters to arrive before the main courses. It was all very chaotic and then there was a delay while they went to fetch some more red wine from across the street (from the other part of their hotel, or the Seven/Eleven?).

Needless to say, Colin’s starter and his main course dish of pork with garlic and pepper, arrived together, before anyone else’s food – no rice though. We accepted the starter – fish cakes and returned the meat course – although I think when it arrived again later, it was the same dish that had been left on the side. Eventually the remaining starters arrived which we all shared – Juz’ cheese-covered crab was delicious. Then the barbequed fish arrived – Juz, Ray and I all had squid, although the other two had tiger prawns with theirs. The two large squid I had selected had become small oval offerings during the cooking – not like the one I had at Schnitzels – in fact, when we got home a snail was wandering across the path towards our bungalow, and this was larger than each of my squid! – to be fair snails out here are the size of our whelks! We all ate up and left without more ado. The food at best was fair, and the chaos was amusing – but it’s hard to understand how a 5* star hotel operates one of its restaurants in such a confusing and disorganised manner. It got top marks for appearance from the road, but low marks for the rest of the evening.

We returned home in a tut-tut and went straight to bed as we were due to be up in less than six hours.