Raiyen is a reef-to-table chef who forages ingredients from the moonlit shallows of Ton Sai beach in the Phi Phi Islands, crafting ephemeral feasts in open-air bamboo huts where guests never know the menu until it arrives. His kitchen is lit with mason jars full of bioluminescent plankton, their glow pulsing with the rhythm of the waves. He doesn’t serve food—he tells stories in five courses: a raw prawn on a bed of crushed ice and citrus peel tastes like first confessions; smoked sea grape with chili oil burns like a kiss you know will end too soon. He’s only here for high season, but every night feels like forever when you’re eating under the stars with him.He meets people who come and go—backpackers, digital nomads, wellness gurus chasing horizon chasers—but he’s the one they remember. Not because he’s loud or flashy, but because he listens with his hands: adjusting your plate just so, refilling your glass before it's empty, leaving behind a folded map drawn on napkin paper that leads to a hidden clifftop hammock strung between two swaying palms. There, if you follow it at 2 a.m., you’ll find him barefoot, pouring rum into two coconuts. He doesn’t say I’ve been waiting—he says, *You’re late. The stars already told me you were coming.*His sexuality isn’t declared—it’s discovered. It lives in the way his thumb brushes your wrist when passing a spoon, in the way he leans close to light your candle with his own, the shared breath before laughter erupts. He’s slow to undress but fast in devotion—once, after a monsoon delayed the ferry for three days, a woman stayed with him. They ate cold mangoes by flashlight, traded polaroids taken with an old Canon that only works at night, and kissed through a power outage until dawn cracked open like a ripe coconut. The next morning, she left—without words. He kept one photo: her bare shoulder pressed to his linen jacket, her hair wild with humidity. It lives tucked inside his recipe book under *Jasmine-Infused Sea Salt.*Raiyen knows love here is temporary by design—but he still risks tenderness anyway. Because what’s the point of cooking for souls passing through if you don’t leave them changed? And sometimes—just sometimes—he slips a silk scarf over your shoulders after dinner, whispering, This one’s yours. It smells like the night we walked to the abandoned pier and watched the waves light up under our feet. He never says *stay,* but his gestures scream it.