Three Great Tips for Your Next Thailand Trip
Considering a trip to Thailand? It’s a wonderful place to visit, with beautiful beaches, friendly people, a long and fascinating history and amazing food. You should go! Here’s three great trips to help you make the most of your Thai adventure.
#1: 7-11 Is Your Friend!
7-11, or “7 Shop” as the Thais call it, is everywhere in Thailand. It’s not uncommon to see a 7-11 every block or two in cities. You’re never far from a 7-11! And they fulfill a much larger role than 7-11s back in the states. Something more like a bodega in NYC, it’s the neighborhood corner shop that everyone goes to, often daily. From a tourist point of view, 7-11 is great because it’s everywhere, it’s air-conditioned, and it has a pretty standard set of things for sale no matter where you are in the country, often at very good prices. Case in point: beer. It’s often pretty high on most tourists’ shopping lists – and you’ll find that a bottle that runs 55 baht in 7-11 will be 80-100 baht in tourist bars – and that’s happy hour prices. But, bear in mind that in Thailand you can only buy alcohol in stores like 7-11 from 11am to 2pm, and from 5pm to midnight. You can drink on the street in most places.
7-11 also carries a wide range of snacks as well as other groceries such as milk and yogurt. It has plenty of bottled water in quantities up to 5 liters if you’re staying somewhere that doesn’t provide bottled water (don’t drink tap water in Thailand!) It has sunscreen, candy, hard alcohol, sparkling water, prepared snacks, adapters and all sorts of stuff. Some even have a cell phone store inside! Check one out when you arrive so you have a good idea of what’s there, so when you’re looking for something in a hurry you know whether to try 7-11.
Also, it’s not uncommon for a 7-11 to attract a variety of street food outside the store. Locals will buy their drinks in 7-11 and pick up some prepared food from the vendors outside the store. Sometimes 7-11 also acts as a known location for things like bus stops. They can be a great place to call a grab (see below).
#2: Install and Use Grab
Grab is basically the Uber APP of Thailand (and many other places in Asia as well). If you’re familiar with Uber, Grab is not much different at its heart. Install it, create an account and tie it to your credit card, and you can use it to call taxis or rides just like with Uber. This has a number of extra benefits in Thailand:
- You can get home, even if you’re out of cash (assuming you have it tied to a valid credit card)
- You can specify your location w/out needing to try to relay it to a taxi driver (who often can’t or won’t speak English)
- You can avoid tuk-tuk and taxi drivers who often are ready to fleece or scam unwitting tourists
- A Grab ride will often be competitive with or even cheaper than a tuk-tuk – and it will be much safer, and air-conditioned!
But there’s one big gotcha to watch out for with Grab – you need to have data on your phone to use it. You can use it with wifi of course, which is not hard to find in Thailand at all; however, if you move too far from the wifi source, you may lose your communication with Grab, making it harder to find your driver.
#3: Try the Street Food!
Thais are justifiably proud of their culinary achievements. By all means, look for good restaurants and enjoy them! But don’t let the opportunity to try street food go by. Of course, use your best judgment but in general street food is safe and sanitary, especially if it’s got lots of customers. It’s prepared from ingredients purchased that morning (or more recently) and sold quickly. On a recent trip, one of our favorite meals was from a soup vendor set up by a very touristy beach in Phuket. His clientele were primarily the other Thai people working in all the other little stores along the beach, and the soup was delicious.
Markets are a great place to try lots of food. Most touristy areas will have some sort of a night market that gets going around 5pm or so. There will be lots of little booths with all sorts of food options so you can browse and eat from several places. This food tends to cater a bit more towards western tastes but there’s certainly lots of great things to try!
There are also lots of more local markets, oftentimes at night, that are much more geared towards locals. They may be harder to find, away from the touristy areas. On our last stay, we had three different nightly markets per week with easy walking distance. These will have much more “real” Thai food, and you’ll see foods that you have no idea what they are, so just ask! Nearly always the merchant can at least tell you what kind of meat it is, and often they or their neighbors will be glad to help you understand. Generally, people will pick up a bunch of food (in the omnipresent plastic bags) and bring them home for meals. Pick up some food and get some drinks at your nearest 7-11 and enjoy!
