The Food

Breakfast is provided at the hotel restaurant and is a huge assortment of Western and Asian food. It’s nice to have the variety and be able to eat anything from fish and rice to salad to pancakes to cold cereal to baked goods to custom-cooked eggs. We are cooking / eating in for many lunches and dinners since we have a kitchen and a nearby grocery store, as well as being afraid of street food (for good reason!) 

I thought things would be cheaper, which a few are, but most of the groceries are about the same price here, at least in my limited experience thus far. Some things here are much more expensive than in the US – namely any dairy product, beef, tortillas and chips, spaghetti sauce and anything tomato-based, lunchmeat, cold cereal, and imported stuff like peanut butter, jam, chocolate chips, Nutella, berries, etc. I am so glad I brought a duffel bag full of that!

We have been experimenting with the local brands and foods. Most stores have labeled at least somewhere on the shelf an item name in English. Since we are basing our purchases off the packaging that we can’t read most of, some things are not what we were expecting. Preparing/cooking things or just figuring what the ingredients are can be kind of a puzzle. We have found a few keepers already though– saltine crackers, a certain type of sandwich bread, some snack bars, frozen hash browns, and most of the fruits and veggies since they are self-explanatory.

There are some awesome tasting, cool looking fruits here. This photo is not great, but it is of dragonfruit – it has fuschia skin with little flaps all over it. It has white flesh with tiny black seeds (they look like poppy seeds) interspersed and no pit. The closest thing I can think of is a kiwi in terms of texture.

The mangoes are super yummy and come in a few different varieties. The mango sticky rice is SO GOOD! It’s just sticky rice with a little coconut milk poured on top, paired with fresh ripe mango chunks. They also add these little crunchy things; I have no idea what they are but they taste good and I find them optional.  We have not been brave enough to try the durian - Kevin said it smells bad. And it is quite a sight – see below -  and they are 8-10 inches big.

Some of the U.S. restaurant chains are here – KFC, McDonalds (Ronald does the “wai” here), Burger King, Domino’s, etc. We have gone with that option a few times when we were out and the kids weren’t keen on trying something new. I suppose they are getting enough of the things they like since little man is licking his plate clean. Too bad that was the ice cream…

We had pizza from a local shop one night – it was supposed to be true Italian and was only OK. I might have to make my own in the future unless I can find somewhere better. I decided some things just taste different here, for instance, milk and cheese. Perhaps the cows have a different diet? Of course, we have eaten some Thai food, and I’ve cooked curry at home a couple times. We are wimpy about spicy food, and I hope we can slowly adjust to a little more heat. We hope to try lots more Thai food once we move in and Khun Jah is cooking dinner a few times a week.

This is our first homemade Masman curry (yum!). Kevin has two specialties – hash browns with sausage and crepes. We were lucky enough to have him cook dinner tonight

We drink and cook with only bottled or filtered water. We are told that everyone here does that, including the Thais. I wondered if washing our dishes in the water would be fine, and I am relieved that it is. We are even brushing our teeth in it and have been fine. We bought some water bottles that are made for international travel, camping, emergencies, etc. that filter while you squeeze them. They have been great, but we still buy water in large jugs since squeezing any more than a cupful is pretty tiring. We will soon get a filter system that we can attach to the kitchen tap.