One of our friends, Oi, is leaving in a couple of days to return home to her native town – Trang, and we wanted to take her to lunch somewhere special in southern Thailand. Joy decided we should go to Kanabnam floating restaurant on the bay, set among the mangrove trees in a Muslim village on the water.
We set out at 11:00am, arriving at the pier to take the boat at 11:20am. We boarded the boat – me, Joy, Grandma, Oi, and baby girl.
Once there they gave us a show of the fish they had in nets in the middle of the floating restaurant. They had very large cobia fish, grouper, some reef fish and even some large puffer fish. The puffer fish are extremely toxic to eat if prepared wrong, you can die within 90 minutes after eating one. I don’t think they were on the menu at the restaurant, and we didn’t ask.
We ordered:
- yum talay – spicy seafood salad
- fried shrimp with sweet sauce
- kow padt gai – fried rice with chicken
- spicy fish soup – which wasn’t very spicy, but pretty tasty – the fish was very fresh
- fried snakehead fish
- rice – of course!
We had a good time! Though it was hot that day, there was a cool breeze blowing because we are really quite far out in the mangroves – and the open ocean is only a few minutes away.
If you are visiting Thailand, you really should eat a meal or two on a floating restaurant – it is one of the nice experiences of Thailand that many countries don’t have. We have floating restaurants on most big rivers, and even on the Gulf of Thailand as you see here.
Thai food is good food – come to Thailand and try some!
Thanks Joy — Looks delicious!!