When in Thailand, you must buy Elephant Pants. Comfy, lightweight, and found everywhere! It’s a little harder to find kid sizes, but we were successful at larger markets. And you can’t beat the price… the equivalent of about $5 US. We had to take a family pic.
We spent our last day in Thailand at Kamala Beach – this is the beach that was hit hardest by a tsunami in 2004. Now, there are no signs of any destruction. It’s a clean, quiet, family-friendly beach with calm clear water. And because it’s part of the Andaman Sea there’s barely any surf, just some gentle swells perfect for floating. The water is so warm, it’s comfortable to go in and out of it all day and float for hours. Paradise!
We used the restrooms of nearby beachside restaurants to change clothes after the beach. Always fun to see a rat scurry across the kitchen, but I suppose that’s to be expected in the open air buildings and tropical location. Out in the parking lot we witnessed something that was quite shocking… an ice truck delivering ice to the restaurants, bagged by a man with a shovel in the back of the truck wearing sandals. See my face after realizing that every delicious fruit smoothie we have enjoyed for the last month used ice most likely delivered in a very similar fashion. It’s a miracle we’ve never gotten sick!!
We found a restaurant (closed, very modern and clean) near a market and had THE BEST chicken hamburgers I’ve ever had. Amazingly flavorful and enormous! Most “beef” for hamburgers in Thailand is a mixture of pork and who knows what, so we’ve given up on finding a good burger… but after a month of Thai food for at least one meal every day, we’re happy to find a more Western option for dinner. We walked through an open market after dinner and were offered scorpions on skewers. Let me think about that for a second… hard pass!
