Our last two evenings on Koh Samui were just brilliant, enjoying great food and the company of some really nice people. The 2nd last evening we enjoyed a traditional Thai dinner prepared by one of the resident villa owners and the last evening was a farewell BBQ and birthday party.

Traditional Thai Dinner

The six villas are owned by different people and all are available to rent, except # 3, in which owner Tim and his family currently reside full time. Tim is an ex-pat (Brit) that moved to Thailand about 7 years ago for work, and is an all-round brilliant chap. During our two week stay he has been extremely helpful with any issues or problems that arose, and we had many chats around the pool.

A couple of days ago he asked if we would be interested in joining his family and some friends for a traditional Thai dinner. Where do I sign up? Wow, what a spread:

• Snapper – 3 snapper that were cleaned, stuffed with lemon grass and BBQ’ed for about 10 mins each side. Once you got past the eye watching you and dug through the skin the fish was cooked to perfection.
• Prawns – yep you guessed correctly, the BBQ was stuffed full of whole prawns. Once cooked, we removed the head, shell, tail and deveined them before enjoying.
• Chicken curry – simply superb and as a curry aficionado, my favourite dish. It was spiced and cooked to perfection. Judi got a personal dish of curry without spices, which was still to spicy, so she donated it to me for seconds. Way too bland, so I headed to the Thai table for some heat. They had a couple bowls of finely chopped chillies, with seeds, and when I put a spoon full on the plate Tim’s wife exclaimed, “Very very spicy”. Needless to say, she was correct, but mixed with the curry it was perfect.

An exceptional meal, and we even had a few Western type selections – good ol’ bangers (pork sausages), potato salad and fruit salad.

Everybody enjoyed a great evening of exceptional company and food, but I must apologise for the lack of photos. Too busy sampling the assortment of authentic dishes, washed down by a few beers.

Birthday Party

Group photo before eating, with birthday girls out front

The following evening was the farewell party and combined birthday parties for Heidi’s granny (80) and maid of honour (30). They planned the party as they brought party decorations with them from Dubai. After lunch Heidi took the birthday girls downtown, while Iain and his mates hit Makro for the meat, the fixings and more refreshments.

Tonight was a simple western BBQ compared to last night, with the menu consisting of:

• Burgers
• Bangers
• Fixings – lettuce, tomato, fried onions and bacon

They couldn’t find hot dog rolls for the bangers, so they picked up some small croissants, oh wow! croissant, banger, fried onions, bacon & mayo. What a delicacy, as it even had all the necessary food groups. It’s a minor issue the food groups weren’t in the correct proportions. Washed down by a few beers, they tasted even better.

Iain and his mates found a Dairy Queen on the island, so they picked up an ice cream cake for each birthday girl.

Above is the final Koh Samui photo of the group, as most, including Judi and I were leaving tomorrow.