Phuket Stories

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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