sawadee crap - bad thai food ahead

where have all the good thai restaurants in kuala lumpur gone to?
a friend asked me that after picking up the tab at montien - truly thai restaurant in the rather spanking new one bangsar cuisine complex in bangsar.
it came up as the food in montien, to put it simply, was bad.
except for the acceptable tom yam kung.
there was six of us, with three eating rice which came at a whopping three ringgit a plate - the waiter said the price of rice went up due to pump price hikes, yeah right!
together with some dishes, we stuck to two classics - thai green curry and tom yam kung. green curry was not spicy while the tom yam was acceptably fragrant and quite spicy - and as you can see, i finished a good part of it.
but both the classics together with the other dishes came luke-warm.
a friend who was just eating the dishes and looking forward to spicy food was most disappointed.
the other dishes were a spicy fish paste or otak otak in an omelette, pieces of deep fried cat fish and a salad relish called the nam prik long rea - minced chicken, dried prawns and salted egg, that came in a platter of raw long beans, sliced cucumber and cabbage, fried brinjal, steamed ladies fingers and crisp-fried flaked catfish.
the only thing going for the relish was the salted egg.
so that was that with the rice and the dishes.
another friend took the pad thai - thai style flat rice noodles with peanuts, bean sprouts, chillies, lime and sugar and said to represent thailand, sweet, spicy, crunchy and sour.
it was just badly-fried chinese style flat rice noodles or char kway teow.
it was bad thai, not pad thai - in my mind.
the last friend just tried some dessert but had no joy too.
we couldn't wait to get out of the place.
we left and headed to to the pretty much packed vincenzo, just a couple of doors away from montien, for some fine whisky. more on that later.