Phuket Stories » Food & Restaurants

A Night Out In Patong.

Michael Finn — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:54:53 +0000

Patong nightlife is something that almost all tourists will experience or at least try to when they come to visit Phuket. Most people have heard of the go-go bars, the lady boys and bar girls. Patong however is not for everybody, if however you have never made a visit is worth knowing what all the talk is about even if you visit only once. As you visit Soi Bangla which is the most visited area for the particular night life of Patong, you will find what appear to be beautiful women dancing around poles or other people. You do however need to keep in mind that these women or girls may not in fact be women or girls at all and could possibly be lady boys. It is often difficult to spot a girl or woman from a lady boy as the feminine features are often the same. Of course there are some lady boys that are very obvious and perhaps they are just getting into the scene of Patong. Not only will you find all the dancers in the various bars but there will also be a variety of street merchants selling their wares. There are also many off streets from Soi Bangla and surrounding Soi’s with bars and clubs. Many which offer the same sort of sights that you can see when you are visiting Soi Bangla. On occasion you will also find fire dances which are a spectacular sight and enjoyed by all. Patong is also home to a wide variety of stalls and markets selling “original copies” of everything you could possibly imagine. There is also very close to the go-go area a large shopping mall, Jungceylon. This shopping mall has designer the stores, fast food outlets as well as local souvenirs and arts and crafts. If you carry on further to Kata or Karon beaches you will find that there is a similar atmosphere but on a much smaller scale and more often those who are nearer this area of Phuket prefer these two spots. Patong is most definitely the area that the tourists will visit when they want one of the most well known experiences of Patong, which is the bizarre and unusual nightlife. One of the other lesser known industries in Patong are the pharmacies selling all manner of medications all of which are available much cheaper than tourists can purchase them in their own countries. As with some medical tourism that goes on sometimes in Phuket, there are also people who come not only for the wonderful sites of Phuket but to purchase medications that they cannot purchase in their own countries without a prescription. Costs in Thailand being a major in for the tourists as if it was in their own countries they have to pay a lot more for them. To get a taxi or a tuk tuk in Patong is an experience in itself as well. Often you will find there are lines and lines of tuk tuks and less you are going a reasonable distance they often are unwilling to take you. I would say that it is quite a little mafia ring running regarding tuk tuk operations in Patong, all without proof of course. As well as the lines and lines of tuk tuks that will not take you anywhere, is very difficult to find parking in Patong. This is one of the other reasons that very few foreigners who live in Phuket actually will visit Patong. In some cases in Patong you will find there are cheap offers for drinks however for most items you can purchase you will be paying tourist prices and there is almost no

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Bananas Sandwiches

Michael Finn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:45:29 +0000

Bananas.

When I was growing up in Dublin, my father came home for lunch everyday as we did as well from school, where my mum would have a hot meal for all of us, meat, veggies and gravy. For tea in the evening my dad always had a banana with bread and made great sandwiches. Actually our lunch was really our dinner and our evening meal was tea. I did not know anything at all about bananas or how they arrived in our local shop. They were always a golden yellow. My mum would buy a bunch consisting or maybe three or four bananas. Years later I was the radio officer on a “banana boat” sailing on a regular trip from a “banana republic” in Central America to Freeport in Texas. Texas USA that is. It took less than 3 days from Limon in Costa Rica to Freeport. I learned a lot about bananas on that ship. The bananas were picked green, washed, to remove all insects especially the deadly banana spider, packed into the company’s logo boxes and placed into refrigerated containers and loaded on board. The greenness of the unripe bananas was critical as to the length of the voyage and the final destination to the supplier. Every Sunday morning we would arrive in Freeport Texas, the containers were loaded onto trailers with a diesel generator, plugged in and the trucks would hitch up and within moments head into Texas and up into the Mid West of the US of A. The temperature of the bananas had to be kept at 13.3 deg C or 56 deg F. This stopped them from ripening. When they start to ripen they give off a gas, this gas was monitored on board in each container to make sure it did not exist. On arriver at the supplier’s warehouse the bananas were allowed to ripen at a rate depending on the demand of the shops. The bananas in our house would have been picked much greener because of the longer distance to Dublin. I love bananas but living here in Phuket it is to my horror that I cannot just buy a bunch of 3 or 4 bananas. They are so cheap that the smallest bunch contains 10 to 12 bananas and after 3 days most are thrown out. Sad. What would my dad think? When I visit my father-in-law on the Gulf of Siam with my wife and daughter, we return not with a bunch of bananas but half a tree of them. My neighbours love me when I return to Phuket.

Enjoy Bananas in Phuket, they are wonderful.

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Phuket BBQ Fish at Xmas Time

Michael Finn — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:55:14 +0000

Are you tried of turkey and ham this festival season?

Problem solved.
Fire up the BBQ. (In Europe the heat will melt the snow of the top of it).
While it is warming up, nip down to the local market and find your favourite fish monger and buy a freshwater fish that is shaped like a red snapper as against the shape of a trout. Have the fish cleaned but have the fish monger leave the head and tail on.
Also at the local market, on the way back buy a stick of lemongrass, some kaffir-lime leaves and a spray of mint.
Back home, stuff the greens inside the fish and sprinkle well both sides of the fish with salt. Otherwise this freshwater fish that is shaped like a red snapper smells badly while cooking.
The BBQ is now well and truly hot. Place the fish on the grill. Turn over when the first side is well burnt.
When both side are chard. Place on a serving dish, scrape away skin and dig in. It is yummie.
Somehow the greens keep the white flesh moist and tender and not at all dried out as you would expect from grilling it, even just under the skin.
My wife does not know the name of this freshwater fish, maybe you can!

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Phuket, Kitchens, Roadside Foodstalls

Michael Finn — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:39:04 +0000

A Thai kitchen cannot be described simply. You don’t need one.
For example, take our house and the house across the road that is rented. Both built at the same time.
When you walk into your newly built house, you only know where the kitchen “may be” from the model on show in the “site office”. There are no hints otherwise in the house. An outside water supply is supplied in the form of a tap, in the front garden and outside the rear door. The inside water supply is run to the bathroom only.
To have a kitchen, you employ your own builder.
Instead of having our kitchen built inside the house, my wife had our “backyard” covered in and there she had a “built in kitchen installed”, less the cooker.
My wife was living in the house without a cooker for a number of months before I arrived. Here you can live very well without a kitchen.
We went “cooker buying”. My wife chose a single gas ring cooker. She was not interested in a twin or four ring cooker. The cooker and gas bottle was duly installed.
Rice is cooked throughout Thailand in an electric rice cooker. They are brilliant. Put in the rice and the correct amount of water, give or take a drop, switch on and when the rice is cooked the cooker switches to “keep warm” mode. You have hot rice all day long. Or switch off and a few hours later, add a little bit of water and reheat.
The cooker is used only for the food you have with the rice. A wok is used mostly but a pot gives you stews. So in a way one only needs a single ring. No ovens. I don’t think the Thai’s have ever heard of “a roast”.
The rented house across the road has no kitchen. The owners did not pay for one to be installed. The tenants either brings their own “camping cooker” or buy already cooked food nearby. The “kitchen tap” is out the back.
In Phuket you are always within walking distance, sometime only a few steps away from a food stall, serving a take-away or offering a few tables and chairs for a sit down meal. All food stalls specialize in one or two types of food. A few steps away will be another offering different food. Within a short walk you will find the type of food you want to eat at the time.
There are these little food stalls operating outside their houses in our estate. The cooking area and tables are on the footpath.
Five minutes walk from our house is a food market. This consists of a communal dining area with different food stalls surrounding the tables, all under cover with open sides. Here you can choose from all the Dishes that Thailand can offer plus a few Europeans ones as well.
Cheap? Yes. very cheap. This is not a tourist area. Only the locals use it so the prices reflect this. All the food stalls offer “take-away” at no extra charge.
Phuket is Heaven for food and the accessibility of cooked meals. In away there is no need for a kitchen in a house. Even in the countryside you will see a food stall on the roadside.

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Phuket Coconut Harvest

Michael Finn — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 08:36:57 +0000

From under the sink remove; (a) 20 ft bamboo pole with curved blade attached to top end, (b) machete, (c) hatchet, (d) hammer, (e) 6 inch nail, no rust, (f) coconut scraper.

Holding the bamboo pole in the vertical, proceed to end of the garden, hook the blade around the stem of the coconut and yank down quickly. Just as the coconut is about to hit the ground, jump 10 ft into the air still keeping the pole in the vertical. The reason for this is that the heavy nut hits the ground at a good speed and it will bounce twice and roll in every-which-way then the one you expect. If it hits your legs, serious injury will happen.
Repeat above four to five times.

With the hatchet break into the thick green fibrous skin to reveal the brown hairy shell of the coconut.
With hammer and none rust nail, pierce the nut and collect the juice.
With the machete, in one downward stroke split the nut in two.
Take the coconut scraper, this is a small stool which you sit on, it has a very sharp wide chisel protruding out, holding the half shell and counting fingers continuously scrap the hard flash out. The flakes will fall into a basin.
Now you have coconut milk and coconut meat for cooking.

Fast forward to Phuket. At 6.30 am I enter the local food market, open 7 mornings a week from 6am to noon. I proceed to a stall where the above action has already been carried out. Here they fill a muslin bag with the nut flakes, moisten with a little of the milk and place the bag in a press. The muslin acts as a filter and out comes a good quantity of milk. I pay 20 cent for half a litre. My wife uses it as a stock for curries and stews. Of course you can pop down to the local supermarket and buy either cartons or cans of coconut milk but it’s not the same.

There is another variety of coconut that is smaller. These ones have the milk and flash inside the green shell and it is not fibrous. On the drinks page of any restaurant menu you can have this coconut with the top chopped off and a straw inserted for a refreshing drink. After drinking the milk you can scrap the flesh out with a spoon, it is soft. Or on the other hand you can have a chicken strew served inside the coconut, here as well the milk formed the stock. I have had this dish many times. Yummy.

Fast forward back to the garden and after many collections of the coconuts you are left with a fair heap of the green outer husks. Leave lying about until they turn brown, get the hatchet and chop them into 1 inch cubes. Fill a sack up and sell it to the nearest Garden Centre. A keen gardener will buy it for his potted flowers and plants. You cover the top of the soil in the pots with the cut up husks. After watering the plants this layer slows down the drying out of the soil, this is most important in the tropics.

So there you have it. Drinking, cooking and gardening all in one go.

Oh I forgot one other thing. When the husk is brown, it will smolder slowing giving off a lot of smoke. This is good for keeping the mossies away.

All of the above tools except for the press are at my father-inlaw’s house. The bamboo pole hangs under the house and all the others are in the kitchen.

Coconut trees grow straight up and are very high. Not like the ones you see bent over a tropical beach. Behind my father-inlaw’s house is jungle with many coconut trees. I have jumped out of my skin many times when out of the blue a nut falls, crashing through the foliage to bounce on the ground. It makes a terrible loud noise.

I must park my car well away from the trees.

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