Cuisine of Southeast Asia and Thailand: What You Need to Know Before You Travel
Travelling to faraway lands gives you a chance to shake off the everyday routine, get in touch with the unknown, and experience new emotions. Travelling to Thailand is a magical experience of exotic nature, clean beaches, blue sea, exciting sea trips on a motor yacht or a speedboat, diving, fishing and, of course, tasting the local cuisine.
Travelling to faraway lands gives you a chance to shake off the everyday routine, get in touch with the unknown, and experience new emotions. Travelling to Thailand is a magical experience of exotic nature, clean beaches, blue sea, exciting sea trips on a motor yacht or a speedboat, diving, fishing and, of course, tasting the local cuisine.
Although Southeast Asian food can be called exotic, it has many admirers, largely because it uses the freshest products: fruits, vegetables, fish, which makes it not only very tasty but also very beneficial for your health. The influence of many cultures can be traced here, from China to Portugal, from where locals got tomatoes and chilli peppers.
For Thai cuisine, a balance of four tastes is important: salty, sour, spicy, and sweet. All in one dish, which may seem unusual if you are used to European cuisine. The spiciness of local dishes may also seem excessive to some. If you are not a fan of spicy food, make sure to warn the restaurant staff when ordering a meal by saying “no spicy” or “little spicy”. It is not customary to neutralize the spicy flavour with a sip of a drink here. Normally it’s paired with rice or slices of fresh cucumber.
One of the most important products and the basis of many dishes in Southeast Asia is rice. In Thailand, rice is used in a wide variety of forms: from well-known white rice to red and black. Methods of cooking rice are also very diverse: boiled, steamed, or fried. It is used in the preparation of most Thai dishes – rice is served here with fish, seafood, meat, poultry, and a variety of sauces. Rice is also part of desserts, for example, rice cakes or sticky rice with slices of mango and sweet coconut milk.
The second most popular side dish is noodles. They can be rice or egg, made of wheat flour, or “glass” made of beans. Noodles can be very different in shape and size too. Similar to rice, they are consumed with to a wide variety of ingredients. One of the most delicious dishes is fried noodles. And of course, soups are cooked with noodles too.
Seafood and fresh fish are very popular in coastal regions of Southeast Asia. Mussels, squid, prawns get boiled, stir-fried, grilled, and added to soups. Even to the most demanding foodie will love delicate meat and a slightly sweet taste of Thai crabs. They will also appreciate the variety of shellfish, octopus and lobster. In Thailand, they know well how to prepare not only seawater creatures but also freshwater ones.
Fish is usually stuffed with spices and herbs and cooked as a whole, with head. Thai people love it steamed, deep-fried, or grilled on charcoal. What can be better than a fish that was swimming in the sea this morning and got to your plate as early as the afternoon? Only fish that you caught and now watching it being cooked right in front of you! This treat is available to our customers when chartering private yachts and catamarans. First, you enjoy fishing, and then you savour the taste of a freshly prepared catch.
Popular meats in Thai cuisine are pork, beef, and, of course, poultry – chicken or duck. Normally stir-fried with vegetables, deep-fried, or grilled on skewers, meat is consumed largely across the country. Chicken with rice is probably the cheapest and the most popular dish in the whole of Thailand.
Sauces play an essential role in Thai cooking. You’ll see fish sauce, oyster sauce, sweet and sour sauce, coconut milk-based sauce, soy sauce on the table of every Thai chef. Local cuisine is spicy and rich in flavour, so spices are widely used here. They are normally ginger, tamarind, Thai basil, chilli pepper, turmeric, coriander, and lemongrass to name a few.
Thailand is famous for its fruits – juicy and sweet pineapples, tender mangoes, exotic mangosteens, durians, coconuts, sapodillas, longans, papayas and other wonderful fruits. The tropical climate allows the locals to enjoy a constant supply of them throughout the year. Fruits are always served on private charter yachts, regardless of the cost of the yacht. Always on offer are watermelons, pineapples, bananas, and local fruits like mango, passion fruit, mangosteen, lychee.
Cruising on a private yacht you have a chance to experience Thai cuisine. Depending on the yacht, you will be offered one menu option, plus fruits and soft drinks, or, a selection of menu’s (Thai, European, vegetarian – usually 3-5 options), plus fruits, soft drinks and alcohol. Your wishes are always taken into account. This applies to both day trips and long cruises on chartered yachts.