The Dinner

Nov.17th - Our driver, Mick, has taken to calling us "Big Boss" and "Madame."  See if you can guess which is which?   I'm not sure I will ever get used to "Madame" - it's pretty universal, everywhere you go in this city.  The stores, the taxi drivers, the restaurants - they all call me "Madame."  I wonder if that goes with a certain age, or if all farang women are called this.  By the way, I kind of like being referred to as a "farang" - it feels similar to me to the term Muggle.

Our driver recommended a restaurant to us the other night, and it turned out to be a real gem.  (We wondered if this was a place he liked, or more likely, that his "old madame and big boss" liked.)  It was called Mike's Mexican Restaurant - of course, we liked it right off the bat for the name.  But it had really good, fresh guacamole and chips, and the enchiladas and burritos were just how we wanted them to be.  (Frequently the western cooking loses something in the translation).  We will definitely be going back to that one.  Too bad it's not within walking distance.  It seems a lot of the good restaurants are in south Pattaya, and we will be living in the north end.  But it is only about a twenty minute drive to most places, and with Mick at the wheel we can count on a  thrilling ride.

We've enjoyed many different dining experiences here - I met with some of the other Ford wives (look for our "Ford Wives of Thailand" reality show coming soon ;) at a restaurant on the top floor of the Dusit Thani resort, just across the way from the Holiday Inn.  It's a beautiful, older hotel with lots of character.  We had Dim Sum for lunch, and since none of us had a lot of experience with this, the ordering was a challenge.  We were hoping for the Dim Sum where they come around to your tables with carts and you choose what you want from the carts.  But this place just had you order from a menu, and brought it out a little at a time.  Pretty good for the most part, but not a good value for your baht!

Tim and I enjoyed a nice meal at the Sheraton down in the south of Pattaya - very peaceful setting right on the water, without all the traffic zipping by.  Again, the food was good, but pricey.  Many of the western-style restaurants seem to charge a premium for the farangs.

Saturday night we got lucky with trying a different Thai restaurant - Maes Ri Ruen.  It is in the mall not far from our hotel.  It is very plain, and the wait staff doesn't speak much English, but we could point to what we wanted.  We've been pretty careful about not having ice in our drinks or eating fresh fruits or vegetables outside the hotel, but we took a chance when this place brought our drinks with crushed ice and served fresh lettuce with the meal, and were happily healthy the next day.  This place has good, basic Thai food at very reasonable prices.  The spring rolls were especially tasty.  It was a bit curious that I ordered "lemon juice" on the menu (expecting lemonade?) and the drink I got was dark like tea...hmmm.  It tasted good, albeit not lemony - I drank it anyway.

Little miscommunications like this happen daily.  On Saturday, I decided to take a shot at going to the Catholic mass.  We'd discussed it with the driver the night before, and thought we'd made it clear that he should pick us up at 4 p.m.  But when 4 p.m. came and went, we gave him a call and he said, "You want me to come now?"  Well, he needs about 45 minutes to get to us, so we had to abort.  We thought about grabbing a taxi, and the doorman got us one.  But then, at the end of the driveway, the taxi driver stopped and shouted out her window to another taxi driver - we had no idea what they were saying to each other, but when she asked us to go get in the other driver's taxi, we weren't so sure it was a good idea anymore.  So we politely declined, and walked back up the drive to the hotel.  May have been world's shortest taxi ride!

Another miscommunication,(or perhaps "misinterpretation" is better), was when we were here on the pre-trip and I spotted what looked like a version of "Cold Stone," called "Cream and Fudge."  The display indicated exactly the same process: 1.  Choose your ice cream. 2.  Choose add-ins.  3.  We will mix them by hand on our ice cold marble slab.  Well, this is how they mix it by hand:  Scoop ice cream into a cup, place the cup on the ice cold marble slab, and spoon add-ins on top.  That's it!  Kind of funny if you think about it, but, really?

My favorite Thai-English line thus far came in a text from our bank here.  It was an offer for a free drink of some kind if you made some kind of transaction within a certain period of time.  The sales pitch?  "Feel refleshed with us."  Zombies take note!