My Thai Restaurant and Original BootBoy

After the excitement of water-skiing, it was back to the house to clean up and get ready for a quiet night out of dinner, a few drinks and some pool at an Irish pub in the Valley called Dooley’s. A quiet night because we had to be up at 4am (for Sean, I wasn’t gettin’ up til at least 5am) to get Sean to the airport on time.

During Sean’s visit we’d tried a few times to get takeaway from this Thai restaurant in Auchenflower called My Thai. But they had been closed for a couple of weeks over the Christmas/New Year period and tonight was the last night available to us. Instead of take-out we decided to eat at the place and were glad we did. It’s not a huge restaurant, but it has both indoor and outdoor seating, tasteful decor and plenty of staff. It was packed when we arrived, but we’d still been able to make reservations on a Saturday night at short notice.

After a couple of so-so experiences with another local Thai joint, we were pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the food. Where the other place had zero spice, this one had just enough to let you know you were alive. They also had their own signature dish called “Aussie Cry” which was a whopping 6 chilis (average was two) on their scale. I’ll leave that one for Nick to try.

To add some adventure to an evening out, there was a massive storm that dumped down a ton of rain and lit up the sky with some impressive lightning. The lights in the restaurant went out for about 30 seconds which had everyone oooh’ing and aahh’ing. Overall, this joint gets high marks from me and would highly recommend it. Two starters and two main meals cost about A$54 (we brought our own wine).

Jumping into a cab, Sean and I headed into town to meet up with some of the water-skiing crew to play some pool. When we arrived, Cam and Aidy were about to get on a table. As I mentioned before, it was a quiet night and after a couple of games (I lost every time) Sean and I ducked out to the balcony to smoke a couple of the cigars we had leftover from Christmas. A little treat on the last night. They’re bloody smelly things and I have to remember not to smoke a whole one at once cos it was spinning me out more than the beer.

It was getting close to 11:30 and we decided to call it a night. Heeding the call of nature before we left, I was a little surprised when Sean suddenly grabbed some guy as we walked into the Gents. I think he was a little surprised too, but it turned out to be someone we knew and were absolutely gobsmacked to run into. It was Brendan, one of the original four who left on the BootsnAll ‘96 tour of the UK. Sean had managed to catch up with him last time he was in Oz and I had seen him only once in seven years.

Beers were in order and we followed Bren down to the Irish music bar and joined his cousin and a few other mates. It was a complete fluke that we ran into him and we were stoked to catch up and share a few laughs about old times and new times. A quiet night quickly turned into 1:30am and it was way past our bedtime by the time we crawled into a cab.