• 5
• happy place

If you stay awhile in Lamai and eat here more than once, it's impossible not to become friends with the restaurant's sole owner/ operator, Bee. The cute, cartoon bee on the sign out the front reflects her bright personality, buzzing energy, and perhaps the sting in her tail! Bee is an awesome, strong woman and I really appreciated all our chats. She runs the restaurant on her own so, yes, if you arrive and she's out the back cooking, you might wait a while to be served. Relax! You're on an island in Thailand, what's the hurry? If you're really hungry, grab yourself a bag of crunchy, sweet and sour, dried soya chunks with lime leaves from the counter as an appetiser. They're packaged to go along with a range of fake sausages and burgers made in house which pack a protein punch on long bus rides, so stock up if you're moving on. There's quite a range of other vegan grocery items. I bought a couple of Thai spice powders and pastes to take home as a reminder of my trip and meals eaten at Lamai Veggie. I spent over a week in Lamai and lost count of the number of times I ate here. Every time I intended to try something cooked to order from the menu, particularly the papaya salad, but always ended up tempted by the daily set menu. Don't expect an all-you-can-eat buffet style - the image above of a customer serving herself could be misleading. A bowl of brown rice (which in Thailand is actually red/purple) with two dishes will be brought to your table. For 50 baht, I always found it a nicely filling lunch. Any inconsistency in the opening hours could be because Bee cooks a load of extra food on the days when Thai Buddhists eat vegetarian (perhaps the 1st and 15th of the lunar calendar, like in Vietnam?) and then takes the following day off. Looking forward to visiting again some day.