After a day of snorkeling with jellyfish, kayaking with leg cramps, hiking to secret lagoons, and almost throwing-up my lunch from a choppy boat ride back to Koh Samui from Ang Thong National Marine Park, the group was ready for an outing.

What do seven Jews do on Friday evening after sundown? Shabbat dinner of course…yeah right! We went to the night market in Fisherman’s Village stuffed our pie holes with pork, shellfish, and everything in between.

Night Market in Fisherman’s Village

From the Sea Koh Samui hotel the night market in Fisherman’s Village should have been a five-minute drive, but what we didn’t anticipate was the fact that the same Friday was the full moon party of Koh Phangan and the shuttle boats debarked from the docks at fisherman’s village. So the traffic on the single lane road was backed up to say the least.

Thankfully we had Anne, the wonderfully insane middle-aged firecracker of a driver who grew up on Koh Samui and knew how to drive like a true Thailander…”lanes are just a suggestion,” she said, as she pulled into oncoming traffic with her lead foot pinning the pedal to the floor. “We do clazy dlive now, okay.” And we all screamed like girls (guys included) with our hands over our eyes in such a way we could peer at the oncoming headlights between our fingers.

It was ironic she could go to such lengths to get us to the market in such a way, because minutes before “clazy time” she’d told us her husband was killed by a drunk tourist while riding his motorcycle. It was a little bit of a downer until I asked her “why a woman so pretty, and the owner and chef of a restaurant was single?” (she told us she had a very good restaurant too). Her reply (after a little Asian giggle) was, “I no want coconut head.” And was asked her what she meant. “Coconut head,” she said, “full of water, no brain.”

We spilled out of the Frontrunner like sardines in an over packed can, and entered the street closed off to pedestrians as we zigzagged from one food cart to the next, and here’s what we had.

P.S. we shared all of these things so I’m not as much of a fatty as you think.

Fisherman’s Village Night Market, Koh Samui

Sticky rice stuffed with sweet red beans steamed in banana leaves:

Those wonderful coconut pudding balls we had for the first time on Kao San Road:

Spicy green papaya salad with dried shrimps. This is the woman and her cart where it was made fresh to order in a mortar and pestle. Oh, and it was one of the best papaya salads we had on our trip I might add.

As a palate cleanser we got a tray of fresh pomelos, which are like giant greenish-yellow grapefruits. Only in Thailand they’re deliciously sweet.

Fried chicken:

 

Whole fish grilled with a chili lime sauce (watch out for bones):

 

Pork satay skewers with peanut sauce:

These taco shell-looking things were like thin fortune cookies filled with coconut marshmallow puff with tart and sweet dyed and shredded coconut. They look big, but were about two bites each….not worth the calories if you ask me:

Grilled crocodile skewers (not the big piece of meat, that’s beef). And yes, it tastes like chicken:

Pad Thai noodles, assembled while you wait. Very similar to the sweet stuff we get in the states:

Grilled baby squid skewers served with a spicy chili sauce:

Grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon with a sweet BBQ glaze. These were awesome!:

Fried chicken and fresh spring rolls:

And fried spring rolls:

Baked banana and mango cakes garnished with coconut. These were moist, almost as if steamed, and a little gummy. The banana cakes were better because you could really taste the banana flavor. The mango cakes were bright yellow, but didn’t have much flavor:

Fried breaded prawns with sweet chili dipping sauce:

Chicken shawarma curry wrap, which we had to get this because it was so strange to see shawarma in Thailand:

And for a second dessert, these sweet little rice/coconut balls that were soft like mochi: