Buffet Breakfast Extraordinaire

January 18, 2020 to January 22, 2020

The Nartsiri Residence Hotel in Ubon Ratchathani

The last four days of our trip

Our hotel room for the last four nights of our trip was a nice treat. It was new and spotless, the internet was the fastest of our entire trip, the TV had more world news channels in English than we had ever had, there was a comfortable desk on which to write posts for this journal and there wasn’t one plumbing problem in the beautiful bathroom.

But, I’m an odd guy, I admit it. It doesn’t bother me much if hotel rooms have major defects and are even pretty scummy. I’m not that upset with pipes under the sink that are not attached, draining water (and toothpaste) onto my feet and then running across the floor to a hole in the wall to the outside. As long as rats and snakes aren’t coming in through that hole (frogs are welcome) I’m pretty happy. A room is just a place to sleep for a few hours, is the way I see it. If I feel safe in a hotel room I’m fine. If I have to shine a light into the bathroom before entering it in the middle of the night to look for critters, I’m fine with that too. In the absence of winter’s coolness this year we also required an air conditioner and there always was one.

The thing that I consider pure luxury is not so much a beautiful room but a nice buffet breakfast. Of course I love our papaya/muesli breakfasts but after so many a change is always welcome. The Nartsiri Residence Hotel in Ubon Ratchathani provided that change. Included with our room price ($24.43) was the best buffet breakfast I’ve ever experienced! I had kid-like excitement over it. Before I fell asleep each night I’d be thinking that when I again opened my eyes it would be time. All I had to do was go downstairs and there it would be - an array of wonderful foods and I was welcome to eat as much as I desired.

The buffet breakfast was from 6:30 - 10:30. If I had been traveling alone I think I would have arrived at 6:30 everyday and stayed until the polite Thais were wanting to mop the floor under my feet at about 10:45. That’s how much I loved this buffet breakfast.

Just one tiny part of the amazing breakfast buffet at Nartsiri Residence Hotel

So, what did they serve that got me so excited you might be asking? Well, I’ll tell you. There was the traditional Thai breakfast of rice porridge (jok) with all sorts of toppings such as salty roasted peanuts, preserved lily buds, hard boiled egg pieces, sweet sausage slices, crispy shallots, green onion tops as well as other things you could find in the room such as various chili pastes, cilantro, etc. There was no little tiny dried salty fish however. When I lived with a Thai family in Chiang Mai in college this was our typical breakfast including the tiny dried fish. In our home all the toppings were incredibly salty which is tradition. But this jok at the Nartsiri Residence Hotel was the best jok I’ve ever eaten.

The best jok ever. You can't even see the rice porridge because of all the toppings I took advantage of.

There was also a station where a woman would make you any kind of noodle soup. It looked good but I never had it since there were so many other things I wanted to try.

The main selections were six large trays of traditional Thai foods some full of hot chilis which I love not for their hotness but for their incredible flavor. These foods were more like what we would order for our lunches or dinners but I love this food so much that I happily ate them for breakfast. The trays were constantly being replenished by the the efficient staff.

Then there were foods that a typical Westerner might rather have for breakfast such as fried eggs, toast, corn flakes, etc.

The breakfast area was always bustling with Thais who had stayed at the hotel. We saw only two foreigners those four days. One, a nice man from California, we liked and invited him to sit with us. We talked for two hours which I loved because it gave me time to have second breakfast, besides being able to have a nice conversation with someone in our own language which we hadn’t done in weeks.

The huge breakfast carried us all the way until dinner time when we walked the streets assessing various eateries in our area. We have been fans of Mark Wiens, a food vlogger on YouTube based in Bangkok, and had recently watched his video on when he was eating at a certain restaurant in Ubon Ratchathani. We didn’t put a great deal of effort into finding it however. We simply thought it would be fun to eat at a Mark Wiens approved Thai restaurant.

On the last night of our trip we searched a little more but quickly gave up and just walked into a nice, clean looking restaurant with lots of shiny steel-topped tables - classic old-style. The menu was enormous and as I read it I came upon a dish with cashews that Mark Wiens had raved about. I had remembered the name of the dish and the price and from that I was sure we had inadvertently stumbled on the restaurant after all! It was good food but at two or three times the price we had been paying throughout Thailand for similar dishes I don’t think it was that much better tasting. If we had had the opportunity to eat there again we could have tried some unusual dishes that couldn’t readily find in most restaurants and that might have been worth the price. I was just happy we had actually found the place we had been searching for. Here is Mark Wiens’ video describing Dee Amnuaychok Restaurant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXN687cqXoo

- Note: The name of this restaurant on their menu is Suang Sawat Restaurant so maybe it has changed owners and its name since Mark Wiens made his video.

Suang Sawat Restaurant - Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand

Suang Sawat Restaurant's famous fish steaming out in front of the restaurant.

The impression I got of Ubon Ratchathani was that of a typical Thai, mid-size city although more organized, clean and seemingly sophisticated than most. It is pretty far from anything foreign tourists would be interested in so it wasn’t surprising that we saw no foreigners. We didn’t really have time to see any sites Ubon must have had because we were focused on trying to catch up on our journal, packing and eating breakfast.

Working on our journal in the lobby while the maids cleaned our room.

Part of the lobby of the Nartsiri Residence Hotel in Ubon Ratchathani

From two cardboard full-size bike boxes Andrea measured and cut the configuration for the boxes we needed to make for our Bikes Friday. She brought along a string she had marked with the exact measurement the boxes needed to be for undersize checked baggage.

Amazing to me, Andrea has the ability to visualize a three-dimensional box from a huge flat piece of cardboard. She cut here and there with our tiny knife and in no time at all she had it laid out. She shoved the still flat piece of cardboard my way and said, “Tape it up buddy.”

Taping is my expertise. I maybe could make a box like she does but it would take me around ten days instead of her half an hour. But I’m really good at folding up all the sides and cutting off excess cardboard and putting on so much tape that in the end we had a very strong box emerge right there on the floor of our luxurious room. It’s definitely a team effort and I really would not want to try to do it all by myself even though I suppose I could if I had to.

The cardboard boxes always look so small and I panic thinking that the bikes will never fit in them.

Taking the bikes apart and packing them in the boxes with all our stuff padding them was quite a procedure as well but eventually the boxes were sealed up, stacked in a corner and we were picking up stray pieces of cardboard and random things we had jettisoned as well as any leftover filth to make sure the maids remained happy with us - the foreigners who first tramped in with huge pieces of cardboard and then bicycles! (I bet a bicycle had never been in one of those rooms.) Suddenly the packing was completed, miraculously, and the room felt orderly and empty. That’s when it finally felt like we were going home. There was excitement in that feeling because the trip had been a beautiful and successful adventure.

lovebruce

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Steve Miller/GrampiesMarkWiens, "oh wow", amazing!! We have been binge watching his videos with our daughter when we gave her with us during the week. Lucky you to have found one of his eateries. We will check out the link you gave.
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4 years ago

Jen RahnThe food in Mark Wiens' video all looks great .. but what really impressed me was how he could get such large chopstick/spoonfuls of food into his mouth so gracefully .. no slop and smiling the whole time!

If I were to try that, Ron would be laughing at the 'schmutz' all over my face and sprouts stuck to my teeth.
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4 years ago

Bruce LellmanPractice, Jen, it's all about practice. The first time I used chopsticks I was living in a dormitory in Taipei and the cafeteria only had chopsticks. I had to eat so I learned! I'll never forget how trying to pick up greasy whole peanuts accelerated and perfected my ability pretty quickly.
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4 years ago

Chris WeeI like building a box for my BF too but as fate and luck would have it, a neighbor threw out a blood red 30 inch Samsonite flite suitcase that BF sells for $250. The handle tower was loose missing a rivet. I put a bolt and nut through it. Super tight now.
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4 years ago

Bruce LellmanTo Chris WeeThat is exactly what I would do too. But as far as doing a tour with a suitcase.... for us it would only work if we were doing a round trip and coming back to the same hotel we started from. And even then we would have to pay that hotel per day to store the suitcase. We like to be free and easy starting at one location and finishing at another. Scott and Rachael have had good luck sending the suitcase on to their final destination right at the beginning of their trips but I'm not sure how great that would work where we travel. But, yes, a suitcase would sure be nice at times. Making boxes is a lot of work.
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4 years ago