The small fire burning on the beach that night on Ko Pithak drew me like a moth to the proverbial flame. When I got closer I saw this muscular, old fisherman stirring something in a large wok which had a big hole in its side. The sight reminded me of chestnut vendors I'd seen in Yaowarat but I couldn't immediately tell what the man was cooking, for all I could see in the skillet was a ball of flames. It turned out that he was roasting cashews in their shells and that the hole in the wok is designed to allow the nuts to catch fire. When he deemed a batch ready he simply tipped them out onto the ground and sprinkled them liberally with sand to extinguish the blaze.
Then he showed me how to eat them. You place one on a flat rock and then use another rock to crack open the shell. But this isn't as easy as it sounds and after half an hour I'd pulverised more of the fragile nuts than I'd managed to extract intact. But the few I did get to sample had a wonderfully deep, smoky flavour. Store-bought cashews taste nothing like this!
Meeting locals makes your travels even more enriching. If you have interesting photos of such people and a memorable experience to share with other readers, email them to pongpetm@bangkokpost.co.th.
The photos must be sent as jpeg files (at least 1MB in size), and the text as document files. Horizons reserves the right to select and publish the photographs.
The small fire burning on the beach that night on Ko Pithak drew me like a moth to the proverbial flame. When I got closer I saw this muscular, old fisherman stirring something in a large wok which had a big hole in its side. The sight reminded me of chestnut vendors I'd seen in Yaowarat but I couldn't immediately tell what the man was cooking, for all I could see in the skillet was a ball of flames. It turned out that he was roasting cashews in their shells and that the hole in the wok is designed to allow the nuts to catch fire. When he deemed a batch ready he simply tipped them out onto the ground and sprinkled them liberally with sand to extinguish the blaze.
Meeting locals makes your travels even more enriching. If you have interesting photos of such people and a memorable experience to share with other readers, email them to 
