Gastronomy – one of the reasons why people go to Thailand. What do you think of Thai cuisine? After a month of traveling across Thailand, I can tell you the following…
If you are a traveler who does not mind eating on the street, you see how your food is being prepared and how local people eat.see around you as the kitchens and locals eat. As a bonus, you can be happy to pay for street pounds usually from 25 to 60 THB. We found a great place in Chiang Mai where we always like to come back. Usually, we paid for lunch or dinner with a cool drink (fresh coconut) around 110 THB.
Sometimes, you can find a lot of street stalls where, you can´t see the name of the food or prices (it means, you see that, but written in local letters, which we do not really read in Europe). It is up to you how you resolve it. You can ask what they offer or make gestures with your hands and feet or try to ask if they have “Phad Thai” (which is a traditional national food, they do it almost everywhere, and according to our experience you never step on next).
If you’re more demanding and prefer semi-empty or empty restaurants, you don´t see locals in these places. Restaurants are designed for tourists and prices to start at a minimum of THB 100. Unfortunately, we can´t tell you the experience from restaurants. We prefer the street with a local magic, and we know that even expensive restaurants use exactly the same ingredients from the same markets as street stalls. In warm weather, everything is processed fresh.
Etiquette eating
A spoon and a fork are used for eating. We hold the spoon in the right hand and that is for eating. On the left, we hold a fork, which only helps to serve the food on the spoon. If someone puts a fork in his mouth, it works on the local as if you were licking a knife in our restaurant.
Chops are only used when you eat a noodle soup.
Thai Cuisine
It is characterized by spicy flavor and spiciness. When ordering any food, it is always good to ask whether the food is hot or not. If you like chili, I must warn you that sometimes food is your responsibility. The hot in our country is not the same as in Thailand.
Typical ingredients and meals
Rice (Khao) – The basis of many dishes, served cooked, fried, sweet, in the form of a porridge
Mango Sticky Rice – Mango served with sweet rice cooked in coconut milk
Noodles – There are rice of several sizes and eggs
Phad Thai – Fried rice noodles with tamarind sauce and chili (can be prepared in vegetarian form, with chicken, pork or shrimp). Served with a piece of lime.
Soups
I have loved soups because they had an excellent and strong broth and it was the main meal for me. They had special serving and I enjoyed it because they served rice or noodles the first, added meat, some vegetables, and then added broth. Sometimes I said that if they omitted broth, I would have classical rice with chicken and vegetable.
Desserts
In Thailand don´t eat many desserts. They prefer fresh fruit, which is inexhaustible. The main ones include several varieties of bananas, papaya, coconut, dragon fruit, pineapple, durian, jackfruit, guava, mango, pomelos, melons…
Drinks
Never drink tap water – it is not drinkable. Either you can buy a packed one, or you can buy a 6-liter barrel and you can find a water vending machine in several places. And it is cheaper too. We bought a barrel in the store for THB 40. The same amount of water (6 liters) cost 5 THB in the machine.
Coconut water
There is a lot of coconuts. And coconut water is very desirable. You can add minerals, ions, and if you cool it, it is incredibly refreshing. A lot of tourists like them so the prices are different in regions. At Phuket, we paid 20 THB for big coconut, and we knew they told us more than local. However, we didn´t find any coconut for the close price. In Chiang Mai, we found for 25 THB, in Bangkok for 50, in Pattaya even around 80 THB, and at the airport, it was for THB 120.
Thai ice tea
It is a very popular drink of several variants that you see in almost every hand. Its preparation is quite fast and you can prepare it at home too. The most traditional is with black Ceylon tea. Make a black tea and add sugar. Then add sweetened condensed milk and mix it. Finally, pour the mixture into a glass of ice and serve.
Marketplace
A lot of people look forward to the traditional market in these countries where you can bargain the price. But what we have read in the guides and discussions, where the prices are visible – the price is fixed. Still, there are a few places where you can try to bargain. I tried it once when we bought the fruit. I managed to talk about bananas by 15 THB less, and I was lucky to serve a young man who didn´t want to discuss it. I take bananas for his price or not. But someone called him and so another came, I told him my price and he agreed. The experience was nice, but once it was enough for me. You have to be very skillful about this, so you can talk. What we’re gonna talk about – they as traders can do it.
