Food

Thai food is a true international cuisine and enjoyed by multitude of millions around the world.

Thai food in Phuket, and throughout southern Thailand, is heavily influenced by the bountiful harvest of fresh seafood from the Andaman Sea. Seafood served southern style is unique, likely to be barbecued, and employs numerous herbs and spices, garlic, lemon grass, chilies, mint, cumin, basil, coriander, and shrimp paste.

Thais love to eat, and you will rarely be more than five minutes from a place serving food. The most common Thai eating place is a roadside hawker food stall. A local Thai will have a favorite hawker food stall for just about every different type of Thai food. Some may look a little shabby by western standards, but a visitor with a little sense of adventure will discover some of the tastiest and most inexpensive food ever eaten. To locate a good hawker stall watch where the Thais eat and join them.

Phuket has an abundance of great places to eat. To write about or try to critique every one of them would make this book the size of a large city telephone directory. Included are a few, but not all, of the good places in Phuket to eat. We will start with a few general observations about Thai Food and introduce you to some of the more unusual dishes of Thai food to be found in Phuket. We apologize in advance to the hundreds of good places to eat that for the sake of brevity have not been included, and we invite them to contact us for inclusion in future editions.

1. It is a quirk of nature; but the most consistent method of ensuring that a restaurant, particularly a small restaurant, will either go out of business or serve the next customer a mediocre meal is to recommend it to a friend.

2. During your stay in Thailand it is recommended that you eat Thai food as often as possible. Thais are justifiably proud of their food. It is always made from fresh ingredients, usually purchased from the market that day and is sure be well prepared. Most Thais rarely eat or have an interest in Western food (except fast food like McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken). This lack of experience is apparent in some of the Western food you will be served. Outside of major hotels and restaurants you may encounter some rather bizarre and expensive attempts at Western food.

3. Most Thai food is not spicy or hot. The condiments and sauces served with your meal (mostly for dipping food into) can be very hot and spicy. Simply control the use of these and you will generally be able to enjoy a wide array of Thai food and not have an unpleasant experience.

4. Phuket Town is a gourmet food lovers delight. Food is generally both considerably better and cheaper in Phuket Town than in the tourist areas. Going into Phuket Town for a few meals during your stay will be well worth the taxi fare (150 baht each way), and the time and effort.

The following list is of Thai dishes that are worth going out of your way to experience during your stay. For the most part you will not find them served in Thai restaurants overseas.

• Khanom Cheen Is arguably Phuket’s most famous dish. This popular Chinese breakfast is a plate of rice noodles covered with a spicy fish flake curry and served with plate of fresh vegetables, herbs, and fruit.

• Som Tam (papaya salad) A northeastern Thailand specialty that many consider the national dish of Thailand. Thin slivers of green papaya combined with peanuts, dried seafood, and vegetables all mixed into one spicy salad that is eaten with sticky rice and fresh grilled chicken. It’s very tasty but can be very spicy. Ask the cook to make it my pet, (not hot) if you are concerned about the chili content.

• Khao Mok Khai fragrant yellow rice served with chicken. It is a Muslim specialty usually served for lunch, consisting of roasted chicken on a bed of saffron rice, mixed with ginger which has been fried lightly to make it crispy. Khao Mok Khai is not spicy unless you dip the chicken into the sweet hot sauce provided.

• Nam Prik Kung Siap. Dried prawn on a stick. It is grilled and served with chilies, kapi (a pounded shrimp paste) and lime. This is a very popular dish and must be tried to be appreciated. The Tung-Ka Café in Phuket and the Kang Eng Restaurant both serve excellent examples of this specialty.

• Khao Yam Rice with kapi (shrimp paste) is another example of a dish you just have to try to appreciate. The Kaw Tyam Restaurant in Phuket town specializes in this dish.

• Hokkien Mee Yellow noodle soup served with shrimps, a Chinese specialty. Can be served as a dry noodle dish or as a soup. Also served as Hokkien Mee Phat or fried noodles.

• Bo Pia Sot (Spring roll) A regional variation found only in Phuket Town. Can be found in several of the small Chinese restaurants you will encounter if you take the Phuket Town walk-about, and also at the Night Market.

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 Fruit

Phuket Island is a tropical fruit version of heaven. Every day all year long a variety of sweet succulent delicious fruits are in season and ready for you to enjoy. Thais traditionally finish a meal with a serving of fruit and save the sweeter Thai desserts for snacking between meals. Many tropical fruits are grown right here on Phuket Island. 

• Pineapple grown here is famous throughout Thailand for being particularly sweet and crunchy and is a major export product. 
• Rambutan is a cute, small red oval fruit with hair. On your first encounter you may not know if you should eat it or pet it; but inside is a sweet taste treat that is unfortunately too fragile for export. 
• Bananas are small and sweet and are available all year. 
• Papaya – has a sweet orange flesh is a favorite dessert. Like many tropical fruits, it is also eaten green, served in the famous Som Tam (papaya salad). 
• Durian is perhaps the king of tropical fruits. It has a bit of an odor problem, but definitely is a taste treat you don’t want to miss. Available in the spring months only. 
• Rose Apples are a bell-shaped, green, waxy-looking fruit available most of the year, the flesh is sweet and crunchy -- a favorite with children. 
• Guava is a round yellowish-green fruit taste somewhat like an apple, it can be eaten with salt and dried chilies as a snack. 
• Mango the national fruit is delicious, sweet and juicy when ripe, but can also eaten green -- dipped into a blend of sugar, salt and chili. 

Eating fruit is not only delicious but helps take out the fire of some of the more spicy dishes of Thai food.

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Water

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Postal and Overseas Telephone Services

The Post Office in Patong is on the Beach Road. Upstairs is a overseas telephone service that is much cheaper than that offered by hotels and guest houses. The hours are 8AM to 11PM daily. There are two post offices in Phuket Town. The largest is located on Montri Road and the branch is on Yaowarat Road behind the market square. There is also a smaller post office on Karon Beach and Chalong.

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Medical Facilities

Phuket Town has three modern hospitals that offer 24-hour emergency medical services with patient transfer services to larger hospitals located in Bangkok and Hat Yai.

In addition, the Phuket hospitals are linked to SOS International for medical assisted homeward flights.

Most hotels and guest houses are linked with a 24-hour medical service as well.

Ambulance services are available if needed and in Patong the Kathu Hospital has nurses available to treat minor medical ailments and an ambulance service for the more serious medical conditions.

Every year more than 2 million overseas tourists come to Phuket for holidays. A certain number of them get sick and some suffer from accidents. Some people may expect language barriers when people of 60 nationalities are treated in Phuket Hospitals but most of these problems are kept to a minimum.

English is widely used as a second language as well as up to 8 other major languages. The Hospitals have good connections to the global network of insurance companies, air ambulance services, doctors and hospitals in many countries. This makes the repatriation of International Patients always a smooth process in case such a move is necessary.

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Language

Even a modest attempt to speak Thai will earn you a happy smile and respect from many Thais. Thai is a tonal language and by slightly rising or lowering the tone will change the meaning of the word. The word "my" can have five different meanings all controlled by the tone in which it is pronounced.

Thai also uses a slightly different vocabulary for men and women. The masculine Thai word for ‘me’ or ’I’ is pom , the feminine equivalent is dichan. Thais always include a polite closing word to a statement, men finish a sentence with the Thai word Krup and women close with Ka. The words have little if any direct translation but a Thai will think very highly of you if you use it.

Farang may be the first Thai word that you encounter during your stay in Thailand. Thais use the word "farang" to refer to Caucasian people, or things associated with them (such as western food ahan farang). The word is commonly believed to be derived from the Thai pronunciation of the name of a early visitor from Greece, Constantine Phaulkon who figures prominently in Thai history.

There is a vocabulary section of Thai words for those who want to practice a little Thai during their stay. Learning the numbers and how to say "thank you" and "how much?" will greatly assist you when bargaining with the locals.

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Tourist Police

Are there to assure your visit is as safe and pleasant as possible. Tourist Police stations are located in the major tourist areas of the island, in Patong the police office is located in the middle of the beach at the intersection of the Beach Road and Soi Bangla. Most tourist police speak English and a few will speak Japanese other European languages. If you become involved in a dispute during your stay and do not feel you are being treated fairly, hold your ground and call for the Tourist Police. That, in many cases, will be enough to resolve the issue. The tourist police are very familiar with all the local scams, and the operators who run them.

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