Thailand is a country that is best being explored with all your senses – specially your tastebuds though! Because Thai people love their food.

The most popular Thai dishes
Some of the most favourite dishes among foreign visitors to Thailand are Pad Thai (fried noodles), Tom Yam Kung (a sour-spicy shrimp soup), Tom Ka Gai (a chicken curry with coconut milk) and the Massaman Curry (a speciality from southern Thailand).

Ingredients of Thai Cuisine
The probably most noticable ingredient of Thai cooking is: chili. Even though it’s not an original Thai ingredient – it has just been introduced to Thailand a couple of hundred years ago by Portugese traders who brought it from South America – it’s hard to imagine Thai cooking without chillis nowadays.

Fortunately for you, most Thai people nowadays know that Westerners prefer a milder taste and often have a hard time dealing with original Thai spiciness and will prepare dishes “mai ped” (not spicy) if cooking for European or American visitors.

Coconut milk is another popular ingredient. It’s being made by pressing with flesh of coconuts with water, and gives a meal a nice, mild, soft, round note that counterbalances the spiciness.

Lemongrass is also a commonly used ingredient because it makes a dish taste pleasantly fresh. Different sorts of herbs like Thai basilicum, ginger, galangal, tumeric and cilantro are also commonly used. Note that in Thai cuisine, herbs are almost always used fresh, not dried. This is partly because fresh herbs tend to cool the body down in comparison to dried herbs, which often have “heating properties”.

Eating in Thailand: A Shared Experience
There is a distinct difference between the eating habits of Thai people and people from European or American descent. Western people tend to order separate dishes, even when eating together. Thai people on the other hand order several dishes which will then be positioned in the middle of the table. Everybody gets his own plate of rice, and then everybody eats from these foodladen plates. It is not common to load your own food on your own table. Instead, you always take another spoonful from the shared plate, mix it with some rice, and eat it, and take another spoonful from the shared plates. Loading up food on your on plate is considered impolite for Thai people.

Vegetarian Food in Thailand?
Many people are under the impression that Thailand is a country where there are lots of vegetarians. However, this is not the case. Even most vegetarian dishes (like fried mixed vegetables) are prepared with either fish sauce or oyster sauce (both of which are made from either fermented fish or oyster essence). If you communicate that you are vegetarian however, they will prepare vegetarian food for you, but you should then learn to communicate that in Thai before arriving in Thailand.

Beancurd is most often also just another condiment in a dish, and seldom the main ingredient. Even though it is commonly used in Thailand, it most often is just added to a dish that contains meat for bigger variety.

Food in Thailand is so important that a common way of greeting someone is “did you eat already?” You see people eat in public at all times and in all places. Eating is not considered a private affair.

•Westerners go to a park to be in nature, Thais go to a park to have a picnic.

•Westerners go to the beach to swim and get a tan, Thais go to the beach to eat and drink.

•When Thais go to any outing in nature, they always take a basket with food and drink.

Have you ever been asked in the US if you like American food? Most likely not, because nobody really cares what food you like. Have you ever been asked in England if you like English food? Probably not because nobody is interested in your culinary taste.

However in Thailand you will be asked countless times if you like Thai food. If you meet a Thai, chances are that in the first few minutes of conversation you will have to answer this question. If you say that you do, you become a little more acceptable. If you indicate that you like spicy food, you move up the acceptance ladder even more. But if you say that you really don’t care so much about Thai food, people will be perplexed and wonder and even ask you why you have come to Thailand then.

We just had the 22nd annual food festival here in Chiang Mai. It is a huge, week-long event with hundreds of food stalls and thousands of visitors crowding the area every night. There is a gigantic stage with all kinds of entertainment, speeches, bands playing, and dance performances. Thais love a good party. The food is incredibly colorful and there seems to be an unending variety of different dishes, most of it prepared in front of your eyes.

Thais don’t eat like westerners. They don’t have drawn-out sit down meals with starter, salad, main course, dessert and coffee. Meals mostly consist of one plate of food which is not only eaten quickly but also prepared in no time.

Unlike western restaurants where your meal order can take 20 or 30 minutes, in Thailand most dishes can be prepared literally within minutes. Thais don’t eat big meals, but rather small meals frequently throughout the day.

Thais are very attached to their food, and they don’t take easily to international cuisine. When they travel outside of Thailand, many times their biggest challenge is not being able to eat Thai food.

Eating in Thailand is inexpensive, convenient and fun. Imagine strolling around, picking up a fresh squeezed orange juice, having a quick “pad thai” noodle dish for US$ 0.50, sampling a local sweet, drinking some fresh coconut juice, eating a steamed sweet potato or a black bean dumpling, all available right on the street or in a market — within walking distance. No wonder food is so important here!