Chasing Butterflies, Brigitte Bardot, the Bubble Beach Buffalo and the Best Bloody Noodles in the World
There are weeks when you conquer the world. And there are weeks when you sit barefoot on a wooden deck somewhere on a beach in Thailand, watching two butterflies chase each other across the morning sky, and suddenly wonder whether this is what conquering the world was supposed to feel like all along.
Welcome to another week in Mr. Paparazzi’s World. And this one has been rather special.
Escaping Rockpool Villa for Bubble Beach, Koh Samui
It began, appropriately enough, with an escape. After all the dramas, frustrations and seemingly endless problems of Rockpool Villa, I packed the bags, loaded the crates and finally got the hell out.
There was one thing I knew I would miss: that magnificent view. The rest? Let’s just say there won’t be a tearful reunion. But that particular story deserves its own chapter — and believe me, it’s coming.
For now, I headed north-west across Koh Samui towards Bang Por and my temporary home for August: a wonderfully eccentric little beachfront house sitting directly on what I subsequently discovered is known locally as Bubble Beach.
And almost immediately something strange happened. I stopped. Actually stopped. For somebody who has spent most of his life operating at approximately 300 kilometres an hour — chasing stories, pictures, businesses, planes, people, deadlines, ideas and occasionally complete bloody disasters — stopping is not something that comes naturally.
But there is something about this little corner of Samui. The Gulf of Thailand is quite literally at the bottom of the deck. Koh Phangan sits hazily across the water. There’s a hammock waiting under the trees. The house has been decorated with the eccentric hand of an artist rather than the clinical eye of a hotel designer, and almost everything around it feels slightly imperfect and therefore completely perfect.
There are massage therapists virtually next door. A tiny restaurant nearby. Sand beneath your feet. And the sea. Always the sea.
I remember sitting there during those first few hours thinking something I don’t think I’ve ever thought after arriving at a place where I actually live:
I feel like I’ve just arrived on holiday. And I live here.
Butterflies, Sandraker and the Bubble Beach Buffalo
Perhaps that’s why one of my favourite moments of the entire week involved precisely nothing. I was sitting on the front deck one morning when two butterflies appeared. They started chasing one another around the garden and across the beach.
That was it. No private jet. No red carpet. No celebrity. No champagne. No paparazzi. Two butterflies. And I sat there completely mesmerised.
Chasing butterflies. There is something in those two words.
Maybe it’s a book title. Maybe it’s just a reminder. Because you can spend your entire life chasing enormous things and suddenly discover that one of life’s genuinely beautiful moments lasts thirty seconds and weighs less than a gram.
Bubble Beach has its characters too. Every morning our beachfront paradise comes complete with its own mysterious operative whose job appears to be the meticulous grooming of the sand.
James Bond had Moonraker. Mr. Paparazzi has Sandraker. He arrives. He rakes. He disappears. It’s somewhere between Ian Fleming and Austin Powers, performed daily on a beach in Thailand.
And then, at approximately 6:30 every evening, another star makes his entrance. The Bubble Beach Buffalo. Like clockwork, this magnificent beast wanders past the house as the sun begins disappearing.
No agent. No publicist. No entourage. No appearance fee. Frankly, he’s more punctual than half the celebrities I’ve photographed.
This is the rhythm of life here. Butterflies in the morning. Sandraker during the day. Buffalo at sunset.
Little Japan and the Orange Pool Tiles
And somewhere in between all of this serenity, of course, I continue trying to build Little Japan. Because paradise apparently requires a building site.
The transformation continues at extraordinary speed. Painting, electrical work, tradesmen everywhere, decisions every five minutes.
And then came the bloody pool tiles. What was supposed to be a gorgeous, glossy, deep red arrived looking orange. I hate orange. More importantly, orange has absolutely no place in Little Japan.
Suddenly the pool stops. The schedule changes. The knock-on effects begin and potentially months disappear because somebody somewhere thinks red and orange are distant cousins. They are not.
Lesson of the week for anybody building or renovating anywhere in the world:
- Never approve a colour from a website.
- Get the sample.
- Hold it.
- Take it outside.
- Look at it in daylight.
- Look at it again.
- Sleep with the bloody thing under your pillow if necessary.
Because somewhere between a computer screen and a swimming pool, apparently Ferrari red can become Fanta.
Swag: An Eccentric Slice of Saint-Tropez
Fortunately Koh Samui possesses one of the world’s great antidotes to construction stress. Food. And this week delivered two meals at completely opposite ends of the theatrical spectrum that reminded me exactly why I love eating my way around the world.
The first was Swag. Now, approaching Swag doesn’t immediately scream: one of the best steaks you’re about to eat in Thailand. It feels more like you’ve accidentally walked into the private garden of an eccentric French aristocrat who left Saint-Tropez sometime around 1972, landed in Koh Samui and decided never to go home. And I absolutely bloody love it.
There is French regalia everywhere. Objects. Colours. Furniture. Memorabilia. A wonderfully eclectic collision of France, Thailand and somebody’s gloriously unchecked imagination.
You walk in and half expect Brigitte Bardot to be sitting somewhere near the beach in oversized sunglasses, cigarette in hand, waiting for you to join her for lunch.
It shouldn’t necessarily work. That’s precisely why it does. There is personality everywhere. This isn’t hospitality designed by a corporate committee. It’s somebody’s world.
And then the steak arrives. Bloody hell. Suddenly the eccentric French garden becomes very serious indeed.
The presentation is beautiful — the sort of plate that makes you stop talking for a second when it’s placed in front of you. The meat is superb. Cooked beautifully. The flavours are confident without becoming ridiculous. Nothing needs explaining. Nothing needs reinventing.
It is simply a great piece of beef treated with respect and presented by people who understand that when the central ingredient is this good, the smartest thing a kitchen can do is not bugger it up.
I’ve eaten steaks everywhere. London. Paris. New York. Australia. Argentina. Across Asia. At restaurants where the bill requires a small mortgage and the waiter gives you a twelve-minute explanation about the cow’s childhood.
Swag doesn’t need any of that. It has theatre without pretension. It has eccentricity without trying. And most importantly, it has the food to back the whole bloody thing up. That is rare.
You arrive thinking about Brigitte Bardot. You leave thinking about the steak.
120 Baht and the Best Noodles in the World
And then, just when I thought Swag might have sewn up the gastronomic moment of the week, Koh Samui did what Koh Samui does best. It threw something completely unexpected at me.
I was driving past a lake on my way to another appointment when I spotted a tiny noodle place. Nothing grand. Nothing shouting for attention. No concierge had booked it. No food critic had sent me there. No PR company had issued a press release telling me that the chef was “reimagining the culinary landscape.”
I simply drove past and thought: Hmm. I’m going to try that place. The name was Tiew Pru Sukhothai Noodles. And thank Christ I stopped.
Because sitting in that simple little courtyard, served from a tiny kitchen run by a mother and daughter, I had what I genuinely believe were the best noodles I have ever eaten anywhere in the world.
That’s a fairly big statement. But I’ve been everywhere. I’ve eaten noodles across Asia. I’ve eaten them in some extraordinary places. Vietnam, in particular, remains one of my great food loves. I adore Vietnamese noodles — the broths, herbs, freshness, complexity and extraordinary ability to create something profound from ingredients that can appear incredibly simple. But this little place on Koh Samui absolutely floored me.
The wonton soup with pork arrived. I took the first mouthful. And the world stopped. Again. Different reason this time.
The broth had that almost impossible combination you find in genuinely brilliant Asian cooking: enormous depth without heaviness. Layer upon layer of flavour. Sweetness. Salt. Savouriness. Freshness. Texture. The wontons. The pork. The noodles. Everything somehow knowing exactly where it belonged.
It danced across the tongue and then down the throat. I know that sounds ridiculous. I don’t care. That’s what it did.
This wasn’t food manufactured for Instagram. It wasn’t tweezers and edible flowers. It wasn’t a chef standing at the table telling you the conceptual meaning of your lunch. It was a mother and daughter in a tiny kitchen making food that tasted as though generations of knowledge had somehow ended up inside a bowl.
And then came the second dish. And the Thai iced tea. And by this point I was sitting there thinking: how the hell is this possible?
Then came the bill. 120 baht. For two dishes and a beautiful Thai iced tea. About five or six Australian dollars. Roughly three pounds. Around four US dollars. Four dollars. For a lunch that had just made me happier than meals I’ve eaten costing hundreds.
That’s the insanity of it. You walk away almost laughing. Not because it’s cheap. Because it feels like you’ve somehow beaten the system.
You’ve discovered a tiny gastronomic secret sitting beside a road on a Thai island and for the price of a coffee in London, Sydney or New York, somebody has just given you an experience you’ll remember for years.
That, to me, is travel. Not ticking monuments off a list. Not standing in a queue because somebody on Instagram told you to. It’s taking the wrong turn. Stopping the car. Following your nose. Sitting in somebody’s front garden. Eating something extraordinary. Meeting the people who made it. And walking away feeling completely on top of the world.
There are Michelin-starred restaurants I’ve forgotten. I will remember that 120-baht lunch.
Soul You Can’t Franchise
Swag and Tiew Pru couldn’t be more different. One transports you to an eccentric slice of Saint-Tropez where Brigitte Bardot might appear at any moment. The other is a mother, a daughter, a courtyard and a tiny kitchen. But both possess exactly the same thing.
Soul. And you cannot manufacture soul. You cannot franchise it. You cannot get a branding agency to design it.
You know it when you walk through the door. And you certainly know it when you taste it.
Perhaps that was the theme of my week without me realising it. The best things weren’t necessarily the biggest.
A tiny beach house made me happier than the grand villa I’d just escaped. Two butterflies stopped me in my tracks. A buffalo became the neighbourhood celebrity. A man with a rake became James Bond. And a 120-baht bowl of noodles went toe-to-toe with some of the greatest meals I’ve eaten anywhere on Earth.
Business, Massages and a Lazy Afternoon
I even did something almost unprecedented this week. I had a lazy day. I actually fell asleep in the afternoon. Alert the international media.
There was also a wonderfully brutal massage from the girls next door on Bubble Beach. At one point the underarm work was so painful I was prepared to confess to crimes committed on continents I’d never visited. But bloody hell, it worked.
The gym continues, of course. Business continues. Little Japan continues. Mr. Paparazzi’s World never completely switches off.
Saturday morning was spent on the balcony conducting meetings and looking back towards Australia, particularly the property market and the direction the country seems to be heading. I find much of it deeply concerning.
Australia remains one of the greatest countries on Earth, but from the outside looking in, the bureaucracy, housing problems, productivity, cost structures and general direction occasionally leave me wondering what the bloody hell we’re doing to ourselves. But that rant deserves another column.
There are more enjoyable things approaching. Mr. Paparazzi’s World Tour 2 fires up in mid-September, and preparations are accelerating.
Hence another glamorous moment this week: getting the necessary jabs organised. Nothing says international jet-set lifestyle quite like waiting for somebody to stick a needle into your arm.
Sunday on the Deck
And so Sunday arrives. I’m back on the deck. The Gulf of Thailand is in front of me.
Somewhere nearby a mother and daughter are probably preparing another extraordinary bowl of noodles. Sandraker will undoubtedly be patrolling his territory. At 6:30 tonight, if he’s keeping to schedule, the Bubble Beach Buffalo will wander past. And perhaps the butterflies will return.
I’ve spent much of my life chasing things. Stories. Pictures. Success. Businesses. Planes. People. Deadlines. The next adventure. The next idea. The next bloody thing. And I wouldn’t change much of it.
But perhaps life occasionally taps you on the shoulder and says: You’ve chased enough for today. Sit down. Look at the ocean. Eat the noodles. Watch the buffalo. And let the butterflies do the chasing.
That was the week that was. And what a bloody wonderful week it was.
