(More) Foreign Pie News

 Good evening all.

It's been a busy couple if days here, with pies at every turn.

Let's get on then........

Pea pie: Mas y mas supermarket, Benidorm. 

Fresh from the triumph of the chicken curry pie, we had high hopes for this one.

Until we actually sampled it.

Pastry was passable. As for filling, I had positive sighting of only ONE pea, whilst JB claims he had 5. The remainder of the filling seemed to be compressed vegetable mush.

An almost unbearable disappointment.

Pisto pie: Mendoza supermarket, Albir. 

Pasty, although having a nice glaze was possibly a tad heavy.

It was immeasurably better than the filling however, which leaned heavily on tomato ketchup for its main ingredient.

Possibly acceptable as a pastry covered condiment, but as a pie.....

Nil points

Spinach Pie: Mendoza Supermarket, Albir.

Determined to break this run of pie disaster, I reached for the (previously ) tried and tested spinach pie.

Once again  the pastry had been prepared by an exceptionally heavy hand (or foot).

Filling wise, it was certainly green, obviously hinting at spinach.

Sadly, it was comprised mainly of FISH. And whatever fish it was had not seen the sea for quite some time.

Possibly a particularly rancid pilchard. I didn't eat enough to be sure.

Desperately awful.

Foreign Pie News

 Chicken Curry Pie : Mendoza Supermarket, Albir.

It was with no great expectations that I approached this one.

As regular readers will know, the Spanish pie is often heavily reliant on fish....

However......

Pastry, exceptionally crisp,  almost as though thought and consideration had been applied in its manufacture. 

The filling leaned heavily on the Chinese chip shop traditional curry, but was none the worse for that, containing no fish whatsoever. 

There were a few morsels of what JB positively identified as 'chickenesque'  plus the regulatory spud filler.

Overall, a decent effort.  

Extra points for lack of fish.

Au Revoir

 Well, it's happened. The crowbar of time has prised us from our sublime tropical holiday and deposited us here, back in Bangkok.

(Actually it was AirAsia)

To paraphrase the much underrated talent that was Roger Whittaker: ' Tomorrow for Old England we sail'

(Obviously we're flying)

Thank you for your company on this trip. As ever, I pray you've not been permanently scarred by what you've witnessed .

And as a last farewell, I leave you with these. (Try not to have nightmares.)

A bientot!

At liberty

Evening all.

The recent radio silence from this blog has led some of you to speculate as to the reason.

To be clear, the rumours that we've been arrested for conspiracy to smuggle green curry out of the country are completely untrue.

I will admit that we've dined on little else since this trip began, but we are most definitely not stockpiling it.

The more mundane reason for the silence is simply that we're still on holiday.

If you really must have details, JB is skipping up and down rock faces like an over-excited gecko, and I am gradually resembling an Abroath smokie on my sunbed . (Within easy reach of the pool bar: hydration is essential)

So there you have it. Not imprisoned.  On holiday.

Although if there's been a crowd fund exercise to free us, please send the cash........

On holiday

 Reluctantly, we've turned our backs on the dim lights and non-existent hedonism of Krabi. 

We're back in Ao Nang, where this trip began. 

Basically, we're both in need of a holiday from our holiday if you see what I mean.

For JB, this is almost certainly going to involve climbing up something.

For me, well, I'll be climbing onto a sun-lounger.

We plan to meet up at the end of each day to see the sunset.

It is pretty spectacular.........

Krabi Postscript

 It's come to my attention that the reason I hankered after visiting Krabi Town is because I confused Krabi Town with Krabi Province.

Different kettle of mudskipper* altogether.

So, anyway.  Apologies to JB, whose rants now seem perfectly reasonable.

*Here's a video of a Krabi mudskipper to further divert attention from my lack of judgement. 

Krabi

Krabi is a town that we've often driven through on our way to somewhere else. 

I've occasionally wondered about spending some time here, but JB has always been dead set against it.

Indeed, he often becomes really quite agitated when discussing it, having visited it once, many years ago.

So, it came as something of a surprise to both of us to arrive here last night.

First impressions were not good.

The excellent Tom Waits sums the place up nicely in his song 'The Town With No Cheer'.

With scarcely a bar or restaurant open, we were back in our hotel by 9pm, hoping for better things in the morning.

The new day dawned and still not much cheer....

I'm beginning to suspect that the name Krabi is in fact a typo.......

A visit to the local temple lifted our spirits somewhat.

Excellent wallpaper and a statue of the Buddha carrying a baguette.....

And, yes, that's right. It's a load of balls......

After lunch,(restaurant open till 5pm) we set out for the Andaman Cultural Centre.

A modern-day temple of the Arts & Culture, it's home to exhibitions of paintings  and sculptures not only by local artists (many of whom seemed to be either visually impaired or on  drugs),  but genuine copies of famous paintings from other galleries (copyright paid for).

If only I'd realised that I could get up close to the Mona Lisa, I'd never have bothered with the crowds in the Louvre.

Thrillingly, we discovered that the Centre is also home to the Bead Museum!

Suddenly all was well with the world.

Inside the Bead Museum however, things began to spiral downward quite quickly.

There were no beads on display, apart from some oversized replicas in an art installation type thing.

More baffling still was this next exhibit.....

JB was especially put out that there was no mention whatsoever of his favourite 8th century historian, the Venerable Bede.

All in all, a huge disappointment .