On Ko Phayam, our author was promised, you can still find the original Thailand. When he gets there, it turns out that there are already many other Germans here looking for paradise.
Let’s start with Jens. “There’s supposed to be a guy who makes cheese spaetzle and cordon bleu on the island,” they say on the crossing to Ko Phayam. And then this Jens stands in front of you in the flesh, with gray hair, a bare upper body, and a towel loosely wrapped around his hips. “I’ll be there for you in a moment. I’ll have a visit from ladies today,” he says. A good wind blows from the Indian Ocean to his restaurant that evening, and shortly afterwards Jens serves canned wheat beer and hand-scraped cheese spaetzle with roasted onions. The things are like stones in the stomach given the warm, humid climate, but they taste good. A young Swabian woman at the table later says: “You can eat it.” And a Swabian woman has to know it.