Before visiting Thailand, it is a good idea to google the available food and dishes and then do a screenshot of the food that you wish to try. All you need to do is to show a picture of the food that you wish to order in the restaurant. If the food is available, the restaurant would be able to cook for you.
Many Thai restaurants and stalls are able to whip up dishes quickly by just using simple ingredients. I’ve noticed that not many restaurant take the care to itemized the food with pictures one by one so that tourists are able to visualise the dish before ordering. Usually there would be a list of the menu followed by a photo or two of the selected dish.
When it comes to ordering food, there is a lot of variety that you can choose from to suit your palate. For example, a combination of food is as per below:
Above: Clockwise from top right: Seafood tomyam, prawns cooked in fine vermicelli noodles, stir fried vegetables, soup and steamed fish.
Tomyam is almost the usual order.
Stir fried vegetables are suitable for vegetarians. Sometimes, I would just have a meal of stir fried vegetables to go with my rice and that is already good enough.
Above: Fried clams with eggs. Usually this dish is quite oily but once a while… well…
Above: Rad na (noodles in thick gravvy)- however in the case above, the crisps that you see are actually fried kuay teow noodles.
Above are cashew nuts cooked with fish fillet and sautered with sweet sauce and dressing.