Short-term visitors to Thailand tend to eat almost exclusively at restaurants. If you’re a little adventurous and willing to go beyond the tourist places and Western chain eateries, you’ll be delighted with the incredible variety available and the friendly environment you’ll find in the small, local restaurants and street-level food stands.

But stay a little longer, and you can experience the “real Thailand” on an even deeper level. When you start doing some of your own cooking, then you need to start exploring where to buy groceries. For most Thai people, the Western-style supermarket is not the center of their food shopping routine. Sure, they’re available in Thailand, especially in the downtown area and near the shopping malls, and you can get most of everything you need there for routine cooking. But one thing you’ll come to notice after traveling and living in other countries, is that people in other parts of the world tend to buy fewer groceries but shop more frequently, and will buy more fresh ingredients as opposed to the frozen and canned goods we Westerners have gotten used to. Sure, you can buy a frozen dinner at the grocery store, but let’s prepare something a little more interesting, shall we? The best place to start is at the local fresh market.

You’ll find these “fresh markets” everywhere, especially in the residential areas. They’re mostly open-air markets with several vendors, each one offering a small selection of goods, which they mostly have picked, collected, or prepared themselves. You’ll see a tray of huge river prawns, still wriggling around on the table, which were pulled out of the water just that morning. Let’s get a bag of those and make up a little stir-fry at home, along with some local greens; and serve it with some fried rice (khao pat), which you can buy there already prepared for you. There will be a vast array of tropical fruits fresh from the tree, including a big pile of rambutan, which are small, lichee-like fruits with a red shell and porcupine-like protuberances. Delicious, and great for after dinner! And if they’re in season, you can get a big bag of freshly picked mangosteen, which are one of the sweetest fruits on the planet. And for your beverage, bring home some fresh coconut milk, or a nice serving of sweet sugar cane juice.

Or, if you’re just too lazy to cook, the fresh market also has plenty of foods that are already prepared, which you can take home for a quick and easy meal. You’ll see the ubiquitous satay, along with whole cooked fish with the head still on, and probably a few bowls of fried insects. Yum! The local vendors take great delight in seeing a farang react to the sight, and may even hold a crispy bug out for you to sample. Enjoy!