Jeffy gets his culinary groove back

A fish called Batthu. Feh.

I really hate this ugly-ass fish.

It's called batthu, near as I can make out. Vendors at the open-air San Pakoi market sell them pre-cooked and sitting out uncovered at 80+ degree room temperature. Shoppers walk by and prod the flesh for firmness with their nasty bare fingers. At least twice a week Lian buys two batthu for the dinner table, to be served with rice and soy dipping sauce. They taste as good as they look.

Truth be told, my problem isn't with just the batthu: most of the food and produce we encounter at San Pakoi is slop, pure and simple, and I'm increasingly under-enthused with our day-to-day choices.

So, perfect timing for a change of scenery: six days down south to visit Lian's family in Hua Hin and Bang Khae. Early Sunday morning we board the first Nok Air flight out of Chiang Mai. (Surprisingly, air travel for two to Bangkok is actually cheaper than the train, and 13 times faster.) We connect with a dilapidated third-class train that drops us at the Hua Hin railway station late in the afternoon. There, we are greeted by Lian's daughter, Eve, and her boyfriend ... or, friend Boy. That's really his name. Boy, as in son of Tarzan. (Go ahead, have fun with it.) Boy manages the fitness center at the tony Intercontinental Resort, which is where he met Eve when she was an accounting trainee.

Eve and her Boy toy at Udom Pochana.

For the next five days I am privileged to eat in amazing Thai places where farang rarely set foot. On our first night Boy and Eve chauffeur us in Boy's brand-new Honda sedan 30 minutes south to an outdoor oceanside seafood restaurant in Pran Buri. Udom Pochana has been serving locals forever, but it has exactly two online TripAdvisor reviews. We order plate after plate of terrific seafood and the tab comes in a shade over thirty bucks, including tip.

Shady characters.

The next day our young hosts drive us to a beach frequented solely by locals. It looks nothing like a tourist beach: whereas white folks would be splayed under the tropical sun working on their carcinomas, Thai people cover up and hug the shade.

That evening Boy and Eve want to treat us to dinner at the Intercon, where he works. This resort, I should mention, is absolutely stunning and I will save my nickels to stay there, next time we are in town.

About dinner: for some reason, Boy has selected an Italian restaurant for us, which is assolutamente delizioso for me; but for the three Thai people at the table, not so much. Lian's priceless expression here sums up the majority opinion of the buffalo mozzarella in the caprese salad. I am happy (obviously, gorge-gorge!) to make a welcoming home for it on my plate:

Me, after three days eating in Hua Hin.

For our final evening in  Hua Hin, Boy and Eve take us for a nature walk at Wat Thum Khao Tao, the colorful temple on Turtle Hill, where we climb many staircases to gawk at the big golden Buddha at the top and to take in the view of Hua Hin way off to the north.

Ascending to a higher plane.

After I am good and sweaty, it's time for a fancy sit-down dinner! Boy drives us to ... oh, who the hell knows? It is now dark as we traverse back roads to a secret outdoor destination where locals dine under rattan huts. Once more we fill the table (and ourselves) with impressive seafood entrees. A couple of hours later back in town, we cap the evening at a Thai ice cream joint.

Curiously, in the last 48 hours my trousers have shrunk at the waist. Must be the humidity.

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Wednesday on our way back north, Lian and I stop in Bang Khae, on the outskirts of Bangkok, to visit Lian's sister and their elderly flasher-mom. As always, I wai politely to her and thank her in English for not showing me her tits again.

Lian's brother-in-law, the bookie, has arranged a room for us at a nearby hotel -- very good and affordable, he assures her. It is nothing of the sort: the lobby is dank, the bellman who walks us upstairs is almost certainly casing our valuables, and, oh, the stink on that room! The bedding is threadbare and ill-laundered, the bathroom has no toilet paper or sprayer, and bath towels are M.I.A. "This room very terrible," mutters Lian, Olive Oyl-like. On the plus side, it IS just twenty-five bucks a night.

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Yui.

Meet Yui, Lian's oldest niece. At 30, Yui is a chemist for a Bangkok-based cement manufacturer that sends her on business around the world. (She aspires to a Master's degree in the UK, paid for by her company, if she can get her English skills up.) On our final night in town, Yui wants to treat the family to a special dinner at Lom Talay, a wildly popular (among Thai people) seafood restaurant 45 minutes outside town. If we can get there without dying, that is.

Fook & her mother.

The five of us -- Yui, her sister Fook, their mother, Lian and me -- are propelled at warp speed by maniacal nephew Jo-Jo, who is a 20-something male and therefore invulnerable behind the wheel. The women HATE riding with Jo-Jo, who makes the most crazed Bangkok cab driver look like a pussy. But somehow we survive the trip and are gloriously rewarded.

Only the first course: Many more to come.

Situated in the middle of a small lake, the hut-like Lom Talay is accessible by a covered footbridge. We settle in for two hours of the most splendid Thai cuisine -- wave after wave of soups, grilled sea bass, huge river shrimp, seafood salads, and more, and more.

I am almost to Heaven. Then the soup tureen arrives and I see my old nemesis:

It is Batthu.  Otherwise, a perfect evening.