- Wow, that is just a ridiculous,
crazy amount of dishes to choose from.
This place is absolutely insane.
This is curry heaven.
There's so much to choose from,
it's almost like overwhelming.
(upbeat music)
Good morning everyone, it's Mark Wiens
in Nakhon Si Thammarat in southern Thailand.
The plan for today is to go to this restaurant right now
that serves, they have a,
just a crazy amount of different curries,
and after that we're gonna go to a national park
called Khao Luang National Park.
That's the rough plan of the day.
(upbeat music)
We just made it to the restaurant
and look at this amount of curries.
That is ridiculous.
That like, reaches to the end of the horizon down there.
I don't know if I've ever seen so many curries
in one restaurant ever.
Just looking down the line,
there's just about everything you could possibly imagine.
Before I start eating and show you all of the food,
I want to do a quick walk through
of the tables of food
and just all the way down,
just so you can fully see the,
just the abundance of different dishes that they have here.
It's absolutely, it's breath taking,
there's no other way to say it than it's breath taking.
Starting from this end
we've got all the different types of fried fish.
Then moving on you move into the curries.
There are a couple of salads mixed in.
Curries, curries, curries.
More and more curries.
And then over here you have some stir fry dishes.
More and more curries.
And more and more curries, and more and more curries,
and they just keep on going.
They just keep on going.
And then over here finally, you have some toms
which are different boiled soups to finish it off.
America.
(upbeat music)
If you are ever stumped for what to order,
or for like, you wanna have a variety of different dishes,
this is the restaurant to come to.
Okay I'm gonna go eat now.
I tried to choose some of the unique dishes
that they had here
and the food looks incredibly good.
Just unbelievable, unreal how many choices of dishes
you can eat here.
First dish that I want to try,
and actually this is Ying's favorite dish.
She called it "hoy chu chu"
and that means snails that you, or shells that you kiss,
because you have to like suck them out of the shell.
But I think they might actually be hoy kom
which is a type of fresh snail.
They are in a coconut milk curry,
there are Kaffir limes leaves in here.
And let's test that kissing.
I'll put this onto my rice
and then you can pick one of these out,
they're little, little tiny guys
and you can see the little snail in there.
And so yeah, you really gotta
suck and kiss them to get that snail out.
Okay this guy is not coming out with the kiss method
so I'm gonna have to,
oh thanks for the toothpick.
By the way, I just kissed out some of that curry, which is,
it is spicy and you can taste a lot of coconut milk in there
you can taste some lemongrass, and those Kaffir lime leaves.
There you go, come on guy.
Oh there we go.
These are little just tiny, tiny little bites.
Alright.
Yeah.
It's like squid, almost like squid.
I can also taste black pepper in there,
I can taste all those spices in the curry paste,
and then it's a little bit citrus-y as well.
Moving on to the next station.
This one is, she called it "gaeng taypo hua pla"
and that's, gaeng taypo is a type of, a type of curry,
and then this is with hua pla which is the fish head,
but then this is, gaeng taypo is usually made with
preserved salted fish which I think this is what it is.
So I'll take a piece of this onto the rice.
Get more of that, I love the color of this curry,
it's really really like bright orange.
Oh yeah.
And then what I can do is,
you gotta really navigate, because this is fish head,
you gotta navigate.
Look at the color of that fish.
Wow that looks like, that looks like,
like preserved meat.
Oh that's superb.
The first taste that I taste
is actually like a sourness,
a wonderful sourness.
The fish is salty, but it literally, that fish,
literally, not only is it the color of corned beef,
but it almost tastes like fish corned beef.
That's amazing.
So you got the, the like salty fish preserve,
but it doesn't have a strong fishy taste,
you might not even know that it's fish.
It could almost pass for meat.
Incredibly, incredibly good.
That's really awesomely good.
That is stunning.
Next up, this one is a salad.
She called it a "yam" or mix,
and it is with little crabs, with little rice patty crabs
and then she said this, the main
bulk of the dressing is made from makam,
which is sour tamarind,
and then there's chiles in here, there's shallots in here.
And this is these little patty crabs,
so there's not really a lot of meat,
but the joy of eating these,
it's just kind of chewing on the shells
and sucking out the flavor again.
I'll just pick out this guy.
Let me add on some more of that sauce, that tamarind,
and then just kind of chew this.
Oh that dressing.
That dressing is sweet and sour
and really really garlicky.
And a little bit spicy.
But you can also really taste the tamarind.
And it's sour tamarind,
and they kind of just mash that up
so you can even taste like the bits of the tamarind,
the like seed and pod within there, that's very sour.
And then I got just a little bit of crab,
well there's only a little bit of crab, but it's raw.
So it's kind of slimy to contrast that dressing.
Whoa, that is a lot of flavor.
Let me break off one of these legs.
And what you can kind of do,
you kind of gotta bite it with the front of your teeth
and then, kind of tough to navigate,
and you've got a little bit of,
of meat on the inside there yeah, oh yeah.
You can see there's the crab right there.
And then you can kind of just almost like,
squeeze it out like a tiny tub of toothpaste.
Oh yeah.
It's nice and slimy.
That dressing is amazing though.
Next up is this gaeng kua gai baan.
And this is, it's like a free range chicken
in a really, look at that sauce,
look at that curry sauce.
That color and that thickness.
Onto the rice.
I believe that's a boneless piece.
But there are a lot of non-boneless pieces as well.
This is a curry that never fails in southern Thailand.
It's just a flavor overload of spice and herbs.
Delicious.
And finally we got a yam mamuang salad.
This is a green mango salad.
There's little fish in here,
there are shallots in here and chiles.
Think I got that little fish.
That mango is really really sour
and it has a texture that's not unlike a cucumber,
like a juicy crispness.
The dressing, yeah it is quite spicy,
there's a lot of chiles in there.
And then it's contrasted,
the whole flavor is contrasted by the fish which are,
have a little bit of a fishy dry taste to them.
That goes great with this whole spread of spicy curries.
It's about 11:30 A.M. right now
and the restaurant is pretty full.
But this is a huge, not huge,
but it's a pretty big restaurant.
It's just kind of like an open downstairs of a building,
and literally the entire front
is occupied by all the different curries.
And then they just sort of have a,
almost like cafeteria style dining hall.
Here let me pick up the camera so you can see this.
So they just have like big long family style tables
where you can just grab your food.
You can either order, another tip I want to give you
is that you can either order,
this is called gaap khao,
which means you get a plate of rice
and then you order different dishes like this on the side,
separate.
Or you can order raad khao,
which is where you get one plate of rice
and then they scoop on right onto the plate of rice
your different dishes.
So if you want to eat big, go for gaap khao.
If you want to eat small and light, for for raad khao.
But either way, that's, it's gonna be delicious food.
Let me try again with the snail sucking.
Grab one of these guys, alright.
That came out immediately that time.
But it has a little extra shell on the end
that you don't want to eat.
That was fantastic.
So I just gotta tough one my first time.
Oh it came again.
These are so addictively good.
Here's the aftermath of that meal.
That is a successful meal.
My plate is full of empty shells
and some giant fish bones, fish jaw bones.
Wow that was, that was awesome, awesome food.
One of the things I love so much about Nakhon Si Thammarat
is that I think I've eaten around southern Thailand
and I think Nakhon Si Thammarat, just on a general basis,
the food is the spiciest of all the southern Thai provinces
that I've been to.
So good, my mouth is on fire right now
and I just, I love it.
If you come to Nakhon Si Thammarat, the city,
this is a restaurant you have to eat at.
The actual real name of this restaurant
is Krua Ba Jong
but people locally know it and refer to it as
Khao Gae Suchon Sapan Yao,
and that means, like, awesome awesome rice and curry,
which is next to that bridge,
and the bridge is just down that road.
So this place is an attraction in and of its own
within Nakhon Si Thammarat.
I'm so happy after that lunch, that I can barely even,
I just want to relax.
But a good way to relax
is gonna be to head to the national park
and we're going to a waterfall which is called
Karom Waterfall,
and it is, I just searched it on the map,
it's about 30 kilometers away.
We'll take about 30 minutes to get there.
So we're on our way
to do some relaxing in nature now.
(upbeat music)
We made it to Nam Dtok Karom,
which is Karom Waterfall, or Karom Waterfall.
Immediately as I opened the door of the car,
you can just hear the sound of the jungle,
or the highlight of this waterfall
are the different layers of the waterfall.
There's supposed to be, I'm not sure how many layers,
but a lot of layers of waterfalls.
And it's so green and lush.
And there is multiple layers,
it just keeps like cascading down the mountain.
But I think this is the, is this the fourth?
Is this the fourth layer?
- [Woman] Yeah.
- This is the fourth layer,
but they say you can go to the fifth and sixth
and seventh layer,
but it's a little bit of a hike and kind of steep.
So I'm just gonna quickly go up to the other layers,
and I can't wait to see the other layers as well
and then come back here to take a swim.
I've been doing a lot of eating in Nakhon Si Thammarat
so it feels great to get some exercise
and breathe in this fresh jungle air.
(upbeat music)
Okay I just made it to the seventh level,
and wow, it is the biggest,
yeah it's pretty big, it's beautiful.
(upbeat music)
The main waterfall is right to this side.
And it also goes down like a series of shelves on the rock,
but it's just solid rock,
and you can see that this spring,
and then on this side you have a huge nice pool of water.
That would be really nice for swimming,
but I'm gonna wait to swim until I get back down,
because I want to swim with my family.
(upbeat music)
From where this camera is sitting,
it's hard to see the whole perspective of this,
but this is a really nice pool
at the bottom of a, just, layers of rock waterfall.
And it's this beautiful area,
this is a great place to swim.
(upbeat music)
All of the falls and all the levels
are really really nice to visit
and taking a swim is so refreshing
and so necessary in this climate.
It feels so good.
This is a wonderful thing to do
when you come to Nakhon Si Thammarat,
I'm glad we decided to make it out here.
And it's not too far away from the city,
makes a great little day trip or half day trip,
especially after you eat some delicious curry.
Thank you all very much for watching.
Please remember to give this video a thumbs up
if you enjoyed it,
and also I'd love to hear from you
in the comment section below.
And finally, if you're not already subscribed,
click subscribe now for lots more food and travel videos,
and I'll see you on the next video.
Thank you again for watching.
Goodbye from the beautiful nature, national park,
and these gorgeous trees.
I'll see you on the next video.