Tamarind Ice Cream!

There’s far more to Phuket than beach. Most westerners would come here without ever setting foot in Phuket Old Town, but we’re based right here, at the Old Town Hostel. This entire street of evocative Sino-Portuguese shop-houses is being restored to create a living quarter of town reminiscent of the glory days of trading ships on the spice route and the coming and goings of salty old sea dogs. Our little place used to be an opium den, but it’s serving us well as our den (without the iniquity) for this week.

Further down the street is a fantastically fully restored shop-house called the China Inn, and this is where our Californian/Hawaiian friend Terri took us for ice creams following another spring roll fest.

It’s full of amazing Chinese antiques, and once ‘out back’ there is an oasis of calm to be found in the tropical paradise of a garden.

Do you remember that we found a tamarind tree as we descended from the mountains to Indein in Burma, and we gorged on fresh tamarinds that could be pulled or shaken from the branches? Well that taste was magical, and both sweet and sour. So today Simon ordered a tamarind ice cream; would it match up to the fresh, real McCoy? Yes! It even surpassed the fresh version by clothing the sharp taste with the creaminess of the vanilla base. Heaven on a spoon.

Jon decided that you can’t have enough coconut when in these tropical climates, so he enjoyed a fantastic formulation halfway between an ice cream and a sorbet, complete with real coconut shavings throughout. Delicious!
Terri gave us two Saul Bellow books, so we’ll be up until the wee hours with some full-on reading! We walked back to the Hotel and departed from our colonial buddy, until 7:30pm when the three of us intend to go back into town for some drinks, and more food of course!