Thailand Eats

Dress (Painted face for Thailand New Year)

This is the fourth post in a series of 5 blog posts dedicated to Thailand.

A post dedicated just to Thai food. This was a gamble for me wondering if you’d be interested in the food I ate in Thailand, but I feel like a post is necessary. When I came back from Thailand, we ordered Thai food from one of the best Thai restaurants in Phoenix. So in other words, it was really hard for me to adjust to eating American food again, even for breakfast.

Let’s first talk about tipping in Thailand incase you go – this was suggested to us by our tour guide –

• 10 baat per person if eating at a restaurant your staying
• 20 baat at other restaurants, per person
• Just FYI – 30-35 baat is $1.
• Wait staff doesn’t bother or constantly check in on you like in the US – they refill your drinks but they let you be. If you need your check or anything else, wave them over. This is just a different culture. Personally, I prefer to be left alone and not constantly interrupted.

Let’s reminisce through my food photos! There are some I didn’t take photos of and I’m quite sad, like my duck curry that I ate on Phi Phi Island, I had it twice! There was a lot of this – Pad Thai for about $1.25-$2. I ate two shrimp Pad Thai and a chicken – you can’t go wrong with that dish!

Sweets

Mango sticky rice is a popular dessert in Thailand – this one below is from Mango Garden on Phi Phi island, highly recommended to us and definitely a winner. I’m craving it now and would like to open one up in Phoenix, if only it was a franchise. This is homemade coconut ice cream with mango sauce, we added a mango on the side. The sticky rice is sweet and the blue color is just a natural coloring from a butterfly pea just to enhance the look.

Below was our first experience with mango sticky rice at the mall – not bueno. The mango was good but the sticky rice was so salty it tasted like I was licking a pretzel. When we talked about it to our friends and they said that wasn’t how it was supposed to taste, Rachel and I decided to try it again.

At the floating market we had coconut ice cream topped with peanuts and shaved coconut. It was incredibly sweet, but gosh I love the presentation! I believe this was only $1.25.

The inside of this hairy fruit – a rambutan. I would compare the inside jelly substance to lychee.

A banana split. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it was just too cute that I had to take a photo – it had homemade coconut ice cream in it, so that’s pretty darn special.

Eat a lot

Sorry, didn’t know what else to title this. Haha.

These were meals that were huge – like this –

Or buffet style – so I just grabbed one of everything, like so –

I forgot what this was – curry something, but oh boy was it good – and in the woven basket was sticky rice! I wish I was a cow so I could have 4 stomachs!

We came across an MK restaurant with a hot pot.

Um, I want a hot pot installed in our house. It was our last night together in Bangkok, so we ate like kings.

Cheers to new friends!

And if you’re still hungry, there’s always room for my favorite…

Since we’ve been back – we’ve eaten out to Thai food three times, and with leftovers that’s pretty much every other day of eating it! The two best places we’ve discovered in Phoenix is Thai House in Scottsdale and SaBai Modern Thai in Central Phoenix! We love them both so much and they have the mango sticky rice too!

Thailand post series:

• VIDEO – Exploring Thailand + Phi Phi Islands

1. Thailand Phi Phi Islands
2. Floating Market + Temples in Bangkok
3. Jungle Rafting in River Kwai
4. Thailand Eats
5. Historic Ruins in Ayutthaya