At the very beginning, we found Thai cuisine to be very spicy, but full of different taste at the same time: sweet, sour, a little bit salty and full of spicy flavors.
Chili pepper, coconut milk, rice and sugar are the most common ingredients in Thai meals.
Eating culture
Eating culture in Thailand differs from that one in Europe. We used to cook a lot and mostly ate home-made food. Living here, in Chiang Mai, it’s cheap to eat outside. We’ve never been fans of cooking, so now we save some time and enjoy eating out.
All the streets are full of local restaurants or street food markets. Local Thai restaurants usually offer a wide variety of dishes and a big list of fruits shakes. The dishes usually contains a lot of ingredients, which are fresh and mostly healthy.
Sweet and even sweeter
It’s a must to mention that Thai people add some sugar in almost every dish or drink they make. They even think, that fruit shakes miss some sweetness and are tend to add some syrup into it. So, if you try to avoid to overdose sugar, each time you should ask not to sweeten a drink.
Favorite Thai dishes
On the very first day, I tried a lot of different Thai dishes: spicy soups and stews, salads, fish and shrimps dishes. Now, on my favorites’ list are stir-fried vegetables with rice and curry soups, which are not too spicy after I got used to the chili, which occurs in almost every meal.
The stir-fried vegetables differ according to the restaurant. Usually, the main ingredients are peppers, onions, tomatoes and spinach. Sometimes cashews are added, what I really like!
Meat in Thai cuisine
Meat dishes are very popular in the North Thailand. The most common meats are pork and chicken. You can try a seafood as well, but the variety is not so wide as in the south of Thailand.
Plenty of legs on the plate
Would you like to try something more extreme? Thailand is a great place for that! Thai cuisine could offer you worms, larvae, cockroaches or snakes. Most of them you can find just in the street food markets.
If you wonder if I tried – the answer is noooo! I try to go fast through all this wormy stuff.
Western food
Eating rice day after day may get boring and you could find yourself missing western food. The majority of local Thai restaurants have a western menu as well, but it will be adapted to their taste. So, my advice is to find a western restaurant for a burger or simply eat Thai food, which will definitely be a better choice in a local restaurant.
