Thailand Travel Information: Thai Food & Cuisines

Thai cuisine has become one of the world's most popular cuisines and highly regarded as culinary forms in the world. Influenced by Chinese and Indian cooking art, Thai cuisine has blended those arts and created the originality of its own. Thai food is considered scrupulous in cooking and delicate in dish decoration; carved fruits and vegetable is often used to embellish the dish, making it a graceful culinary art, not only for is taste but also its appearance.

Rice is the main staple of Thai people. Steamed or boiled rice (sticky rice in Northern and Northeastern Thailand) is the elemental plate of the meal and will be eaten with several dishes. Thai cuisine combines vegetable, fish, and other meat cooked with many kinds of spices such as garlic, chili, lemongrass, coconut milk, tamarind, ginger, coriander, basil, and peanuts. The taste of Thai food is usually hot and spicy. The most famous Thai dishes are Tom Yum Kung, the spicy soup with shrimp and Pad -Thai, noodle fried with meat and vegetable.

Thai cuisine has also a wide variety of desserts and snacks to choose from. Most of Thai desserts are made of sugar, egg, and coconut milk. Kanom Buang, batter folded over and filled with scraped coconut, egg yolk and green onion. Sang Kaya, custard made from coconut milk, sugar and eggs, usually eaten with sticky rice steamed with coconut milk. Visitors can find Thai desserts in most restaurants and also on the sidewalk. When it comes to fruits, Thailand is abounding with tropical fruits. A parade of different kinds of fruits can be seen all year round. Durian, rambutant, mangosteen, mango, banana, papaya are to name just a few.

THAI FOODS

Thailand, being an Asian crossroads for centuries, owes its rich culinary art to the cuisines of India, China, Malaysia and Indonesia. The success of the country�s cuisine lies in the blend of 4 basic tastes-salty, sweet, sour and pungent- which form a wide range of flavors, making the dinner want to eat more and more. However, foreigners must note that chilies amply used in a number of Thai dishes, such as curry, fried dishes and even soups. So if you are trying Thai hot food for the first time, watch out for the little green or red chillies or ask the chef to make the dish less hot than usual. Take plenty of not so hot cooked rice along with the hot dishes. This is the way to smother the fire in your mouth, which cannot be done with sweets or even a cold drink.

Normally, each Thai restaurant has its own specialties, so ask the waiter for recommendation. Some favorite Thai dishes are: Kai Ho Bai Toei (seasoned fried chicken in leaf wrappers); Thotman Plakrai or Thotman kung, Fish or shrimp fritters in Thai style; various kinds of yam (Thai salad); Tomyam (hot and sour soup); curry and namprik with fish vegetables. And perfect your Thai meal by ending it with Thai sweets, such as salim, thapthim krop, lotchunng, khanom chan, coconut-cream gelatine, thong yot, foi thong, etc.

SEAFOOD

More and more visitors to Thailand have discovered to their delight that Thailand is not only a kingdom of fruits, but also a kingdom of seafood. Anyone who has experienced Thai seafood will readily agree to its great variety and its savoury taste and sweet smell.

A secret of seafood deliciousness lies in its freshness. As Thailand has a long coastline, and Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket and most other cities are close to the sea, fresh supplies of fish, crabs, prawns, lobsters and other shellfish are always available and all eaters will find them most palatable no matter whether they are gourmet or just ordinary diners.

WESTERN & ASIAN FOODS

Most coffeeshop in tourist hotels serve an approximation of European food, some also Chinese and Japanese. For mere authentic dishes, you can try the nationality restaurants, mostly located in the leading in the busy shopping areas. There you will find the food and desserts in their original tastes. Western cuisine available in Bangkok and provincial tourist centers are American, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Scandinavian and Swiss. Asian cuisine includes Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Muslim and Arabic.

CHINESE FOOD

Thailand is an ideal place for enjoying genuine Chinese food that tastes exactly like that of its country of origin. The Chinese culinary art was first brought in large numbers in the late Ayuthaya period over 200 years ago. As a result of the long history of contact between the two peoples, the Thai and the Chinese cultures are now well mixed in many aspects, including the art of cooking. Chinese food is commonly served in restaurants and hotels in every part of Thailand, especially in Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya and Chiang Mai. Indeed, Thailand is the only place outside China (and Taiwan and Hongkong) that can provide tourists with such a wide choice of delicious Chinese dishes.

Introduction to Pattaya

If you have Travel agent selling you a package tour to Pattaya saying that it has a beautiful beach resort or one of the best beaches in Thailand. Don't be fool by this, instead Pattaya doesn't have that lovely beaches as it is too commercialised. Pattaya beach doesn't stand a chance to be counted as one of the best beaches in Thailand because it is way too polluted and dirty. You will find rubbish littered in the sea and along the shore.

Pattaya beach - taken from beach road.

Although the beach here is not that great but you will not get bored walking down the long beach here because it is full with shops and people. A lot of times you will get people approaching you trying to sell something while you're trying to relax on the beach.

These vendors come hassling you trying to sell everything ranging from clothing to ornaments or just about anything that you can name. This happen a lot in Jomtien beach. Jomtien beach in Pattaya is probably the most famous beach. It attracts a lot of locals as well as foreigners or "Farang" as the Thai would call anyone with a Caucasian race.

Don't be surpise to find the Thais sitting under a big umbrella at the beach all day afraid of the sun. This is because they do not like sun tan and people with dark skin get are look down in the society. Let me tell you a bit more about the Thai people so you understand them a bit more.

The Thai people are very shy, most of them are probably at the beach or swiming in the sea with T-shirt on. It is far more common for Thai to swim in T-shirts than they do in bikinis. This doesn't mean that as a "Farang" you are not allowed to wear bikinis or swimming trunk. Definitely you can, nobody minds.

Pattaya has a famous reputation as one of the sex capital in Thailand or even Asia. Almost every where you go you will find prostitutes or agogo bars. Especially in South Pattaya, down walking street. I almost forgot to mention, be really careful who you hook up with! A lot of the pretty girls here are actually lady boy, you really have to be careful.

There are a lot of lady boy around Pattaya and it seems as if it is common in Thailand for lady boy. By Lady boy I mean, guys that have had their operation to turn their bodies to look more like women. Some of them have done a really good job.

Alright, you're probably wondering how to get around Pattaya. Its not hard, just get on one of the "Songtaews". Just flag down the Songtaew you see, hop in. Just press one of the buzzer when you want to get down. The fare is usually 5 - 20 baht depending on the distance. Sometime you may be ask to pay more but as of now this is the current fare.

This is a fare for the regular route, I mean with other people in the Songtaew as well. Now the fare will be different if you hire a Songtaew to go from specific place to another, this is where you really have to negotiate the fare. Don't let them over charge you. To avoid all of this, just get in the (regular route)Songtaew and see where it goes and just get off where you like or (specific point)discuss the fare first before you go anywhere.

Song taew

Taking a motorcycle taxi is another option, the fare for this vary greatly. This is obviously a more expensive option incomparison with Songtaew. Again make sure you discuss the fare before you hop on one of them.

Motor cycle taxi

Accomodation - make sure you book early because it can be really competitive during a festival such as New year, or Songkran ( the water throwing festival also known as Thai new year on April 13th). For a guest house the price range is about 300 - 500 Baht for a night. For hotels the price range is normally 600 baht up depending on the location and season.

Booking are usual seldom but be better during festival. One of the best thing about hotels in Pattaya is that buffet breakfast are usually good and are at a competitive price. Some even offer a 80 baht buffet breakfast with bacon, bread, milk, coffee all you can eat. So make sure you do ask for the buffet breakfast.

Restaurants - Thailand is famous for its food. Pattaya offers a varierty of restaurants ranging from Indian to the original Thai food. Prices are not high but again if you're paying more than a 100 baht per plate then you're being over charged. Do try out the vendors on the foot path that sells noodle or rice, they are pretty cheap and nice. I'm not quite sure if it is clean but who cares. :P

Shopping - This is a one of the things that you will definitely be doing in Thailand. Not so much in Pattaya when compare to Bangkok, but nevertheless here's the picture of what all you can shop for.

Some of the stuff you can get as a Sourvenir

Submitted by : Ervin