So, this is it. The final post about Thailand. There’s no better way to round off than with the best night of the trip at The Thai Experience in Lamai, Koh Samui.
Mother and I were collected from our hotel by a private transfer and taken to The Thai Experience. Upon arrival, we were greeted by our hilarious host Ivan, and given a little bit of background about The Thai Experience and other experiences the company run around the world. We were invited to place a pin on the world map to show where we were from. From my experience of Thailand there were a lot of tourists from Australia and America, which the map of customers at The Thai Experience confirms.
As the other guests rolled in, we were each given a mango colada welcome cocktail, a chef hat and an apron. No one looked quite as good in theirs as Ivan.
Once we were all seated around our grand dining table, course one kicked off. A cocktail course!
We were each given a rack of three shots of different cocktails, and asked to choose our favourite to make a full glass of. The twist was that we were making the cocktail for the person sitting next to us, not ourselves.
The concept is great, you get chatting to people you don’t know and you get drunk. It’s unlimited cocktails and beers for the whole evening too!
Who has the best shake face?
First up in the marathon food fest was a mixed starter platter: South American white snapper with lime juice, prawn and lime salad with wonton, and a pork north eastern Thai pork salad. My favourite of these was the pork, closely rivalled by that one prawn tempura. I could have done with a whole plate of prawn tempura if I’m honest.
To break up the evening and really give us a Thai experience, we were given a lesson in Thai street food before being served some gourmet street food styled skewers of pork and sticky rice.
Topped with tamarind sauce we made ourselves, I’ll have you know!
The main course was a two-part affair of a meat course and a fish course. I was probably on my fourth cocktail by now so I can not remember what any of the main course dishes were called. The pictures have jogged my memory that the stewed pork was my favourite, and I had about half the pot of rice.
Although you seem to only be presented with small dishes, there are so many that I was pretty full by the time we were presented with Singha beer battered fish nuggets, white snapper fillet, and fish balls.
I was sitting smiling in a little mango colada haze by the time dessert came. With all the dishes at The Thai Experience, they are created as a fusion of recipes from around the world but infused with Thai flavours and cooking methods. Dessert had a mixed response around the table.
Some members of the group didn’t eat seafood and some had specific dietary requirements that they expressed at start, and were accommodated accordingly.
Our evening at The Thai Experience was fabulous! We had conversations with people we wouldn’t have had any other way, spent at least an hour learning American ways of pronunciation (and mocking their Shakespearean English accents), and said goodbye to Thailand in the best way possible – full up and a little bit drunk.
Thank you Thailand! From Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai to Koh Samui, you’ve been fabulous and truly a trip I will remember and recommend forever.
Harleigh Reid
I write about food and eat a lot.
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