Your first trip to rural areas of Thailand can prove to be a whole new cultural experience. There are various customs you’ll be expected to conform to and a list of do’s and don’ts and one of them involves their eating customs.

Although you’ll undoubtedly have your own habits when it comes to eating, if you’re visiting parts of rural Thailand in particular, it’s appreciated if you can adapt to their style of eating. Thai’s only eat with the right hand, so if you’re used to using your left, you may need to sit on your left hand for a while, whilst you get used to it! What’s more, although forks are often found on the table with your meal, they’re not used for eating – only for putting food on the spoon. Instead, you’re expected to eat with the spoon in your right hand.

However, when you’re eating sticky rice, the spoon rule doesn’t, as it’s regarded as being a food that you eat by hand. To make things easier, squish the rice up into a ball and eat like that. You can also use the rice as a form of spoon, and eat other items of food from it.

Everyone shares the same serving plate and you’re expected to use your own spoon to dish food from it onto your plate. But be careful – if you’re going for seconds it’s deemed impolite if you still have remains of food on your spoon, and especially if any of it accidentally drops onto the serving plate!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 at 7:20 am and is filed under Eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.