Looking for a suitable place to have dinner on my 2nd night in Udon Thani, I wandered into Siem Hai, a relatively upscale Chinese Restaurant. I approached the Maitre’ D, a wiry Chinese fellow and asked him whether it would be possible to get a vegetarian meal with tofu for dinner. No problem replied the young man, who obviously had an excellent command of English. Within five minutes after sitting down, the young waitress brought me a glass of water and a bowl of steamed rice. Another 20 minutes went by and I was still waiting for my entree to be served. In the meantime, the untouched rice was getting cold. I made a motion to the young waitress and I let her know in no uncertain terms that was I very displeased at the long wait. Looking around the restaurant, there were only two other tables that were occupied albeit by large families. Ok, The restaurant was busy but not that busy. As she took away the cold rice, I pointed to my watch and told her in simple English, that I would wait another 10 minutes for my meal or I would walk. Apologetically, she told me that my dinner would be served in a couple of minutes. Eight minutes later, still no food. Again, I pointed to my watch, making sure that the waitress saw my posturing. About 20 seconds later, she brought me a bill for 5 baht for the glass of water, at which point I got out my seat and made a beeline for the exit without looking back. Bottom line - I waited for approximately 35 minutes for dinner only to be served just a bowl of steamed rice and water.

Under no circumstances, do I tolerate such slack service by any restaurant, not only in Thailand but anywhere in the world. When a restaurant’s service is this bad - I just walk!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under Thailand, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.