Thailand – Phetchaburi and a Food Tour

We had to get a taxi to Phetchaburi because at this point we still didn’t understand the trains and the bus ride sounded purgatory (7 hours). Also for roughly £90 the taxi (4.5 hour ride)  didn’t sound that bad for two people. We had a woman driver who was lovely. The car was electric and needed a charge half way so we stopped at a service station on a a sort of motorway with this amazing Temple behind it!

I expect I will get rather fed up of the temples but not yet! The heat I could do without though!

Anyway, why did we go to Petchaburi? Well Tatjana took a fancy to a food tour and it was in this town. And that was a real find, it was a lovely historical place, lots of unusual temples and a Ex Royal Palace. Again it was not really on the tourist trail. On our arrival we went exploring and everything seemed shut. Apparently in this town everything shuts on a Sunday. We wandered to Wat Yai Suwannaram (guess what? Another temple) and I realised here what was so different about the act of Buddhist/Hindu worship as opposed to worship in Nepal and Northern India, there is no Tikka (red or yellow powder) or any prayer flags or blessing scarfs. However in this temple we saw for the first time the act of placing gold leaf on the statues.

The temples here are old and at first I thought the shape of the buildings sloping inward walls and curved base to do the earth slumping but it’s not, it is the design in this area.

Later we went to a recommended restaurant in an old house on the river. What an amazing  building and used in historical Thai movies, I’m not surprised!

The next day was our tour with Feast Thailand https://feastthailand.com/food-tours/

I love my food but I’m not good at telling you what’s in it! Tatjana is a real foodie and has some experience of Asian dishes. The tour led by the aptly named Cream (often Thai have a European nicknames given at birth and it seems like they choose things they like the sound of).

We headed off walking to a market (that opens at 0100 hours in the morning!) to sample the snacks of street food first. We also looked at the street art too!

Cream urged us not to eat too much and would keep the leftovers for us to take home later. We also got insights into the Thai culture. Here are food the highlights;

Rice in ice jasmine flower perfumed water served with sweet rays fish, sweet radish and fried shrimp paste balls, KHAO CHE. It’s a summer dish! The fish was mixed with palm sugar, I would never have known it was fish!

Fried fish cake served with fermented rice noodles KANOM JEEN TOD MAN. We saw noodles being made in huge volumes, all different sorts.

Phetchaburi baked bread Egg pudding, like an egg custard. KANOM MOR KAENG

Triangle sticky rice in syrup and ice

Fermented rice noodles served with sweet peanuts sauce KANOM JEEN NAM PRIK

Palm sugar ice cream, and there were some very strange toppings, including preserved gooseberry and grass jelly, which tastes like Lapsang Souchong Tea. We ignored this little shop when we arrived but from Cream we found out it is famous all over Thailand!

Fried Papaya Salad
Fried sea fish wrap with lime, ginger, onion, chillies, plum sauce and Beetle leaf. OMG this was my favourite of all time. We had a slightly different version later in Bangkok.

Finally Wing bean salad with minced pork, prawns and Boiled eggs.

We visited a palm sugar plantation and saw how the sugar is extracted, its a complicated process, there are male and female trees. Its the long male flowers that have to be massaged regularly then soaked in water, all this occuring 50 foot up a tree. One wonders how they discovered how to do this at all! The water is then boiled down to sugar. Just about everything can be used from this tree (male and female). You can tell if you’re eating something with palm sugar, it has a distinct flavour.

In the middle of the tour we went to use a Temple toilets and Cream suggested we go and look at the Temple and offered to show us how to pray to Buddha. It’s not too dissimilar to Christian practice except in one thing, the fortune telling!

We followed the devotion, lighting a candle, josh sticks, presenting flowers and then the placing of money (small amount). Then we went inside, we were shown how to pray (kneeling) and then to use the sticks for our fortune to be told.

Tatjana’s fortune wasn’t so good so she put it back for someone else, apparently it’s allowed. Mine you can read below!

We enjoyed the town of Petchaburi so much, we stayed another night!

Unfortunately the next day was 36 degrees celsius. We used the hotel cycles to visit the Phra Nakhon Khiri Historical Park, (shown above) a previous palace but, really it was too hot to enjoy anything much!

We sat in the shade studying air quality maps and temperature maps online. Northern Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have poor air quality at this time of year due to crop burning. This is a traditional way of burning to clear land but, it’s so vast now it’s a real health issue, add that to very high temperatures and it’s not at all good. We decided we need to go somewhere cooler and currently thinking Taiwan, South Korea (although they have a huge fire raging) and Japan. Still undecided but formulating a plan!

We noticed before in Thailand official looking people taking photos of us and other tourists. This time we asked a man who took a picture of us. We were right, not sure why the this is but, we think it’s a way to justify that tourists actually attend these attractions. Often we are pretty much alone or only Europeans in these places.

Tatjana went for a massage and I flaked out in the hotel after!

I thought you’d like to see a sample of Thai writing, this is obviously type set but, it’s quite beautiful

วัดใหญ่สุวรรณาราม วรวิหาร เพชรบุรี.

Neither Tatjana or I speak any of this language apart from ‘hello, thank you and not spicy’, the latter being essential!

Next Bangkok!