The coconut tree: there are not many more familiar sights in Thailand. It bears fruit with juice that is good to drink and meat that can be used in cooking. It is an emblem of the seaside and grown in extensive groves by farmers. The taller the coconut trees, the older the community in which the grove is located. And the versatility of the plant is something to marvel at.
It might be said that the coconut palm is a plant belonging to the world’s population — an ancient possession. It has rooted itself so deeply in societies that it in many ways expresses the cultural relationship between humans and plants. From the Pacific Islands to India, Southeast Asia and the tropical Americas, the coconut palm answers all kinds of needs, depending on the character of the society using it.
In the Pacific, besides drinking coconut water and extracting coconut cream from the meat, islanders also use the shells as vessels to hold water as well as for ornaments. People in the Maldives, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand all use the same kind of grater to shred coconut. Bali would lose its identity as well as its charm without coconut trees. The Balinese roll and weave coconut branches into the form of Naga serpents — the celestial being that Balinese tradition says brings rain from the sky to the island.
Every morning Balinese villagers use flowers of different colours to fill special baskets woven from the bright green upper leaves of the coconut palm. These baskets are placed at the corners of homes as offerings to the god. Children take these same bright green leaves to school, where they are taught how to weave them into works of art.
Thais also get full value out of coconut trees. There is evidence that Thais only learned to consume coconut cream about 200 years ago, through Indian, Indonesian and Malayan influence. But the meat of the coconut has been used here for more than 700 years. Ruins from the Sukhothai period have revealed ceramic lamps that burned coconut oil. On the porches and walkways that run around the ubosot, or ordination hall, in Buddhist temples there were indentations in which coconut oil lanterns were set for illumination during important festivals and ceremonies.
Besides being used to fuel lamps, coconut oil was used in traditional Thai medicine for massages that treated muscle and bone pain. When Thais began to eat coconut cream through the influence of Indian and Islamic cuisine, they used the oil extracted during the production process to fry food in woks that were themselves an import, this time from China.
Coconut oil can be used for frying all kinds of food, including old-fashioned desserts and snacks like khao taen — steamed sticky rice pressed into flat, round patties that are set out to dry before frying. After being fried until crisp, palm sugar is dribbled over them. Another old-style sweet is khanom bai bua, flour mixed with sugar and coconut cream and then fried in coconut oil to create lotus leaf-shaped rounds.
Snacks that appeared later, like kluay khaek (sliced bananas coated in rice-flour batter and deep-fried), khao mao (unripe rice mixed with coconut and sugar and deep-fried), and man thawt (a starchy root dipped in rice flour batter and fried until crisp) were all cooked in coconut oil. It was available before pork fat and other vegetable oils appeared on the scene. When alternative vegetable oils did arrive, cooks largely abandoned coconut oil because industrially-produced oils replaced it. With the passing of time, however, there has been a change back, especially when doctors began recommending it as the best cooking oil.
These are a few of the ways in which the fruits of the coconut palm are used in cooking, but their versatility extends well beyond the kitchen, including those that are too mature to eat. In the past, when children were learning to swim in a river or canal, grownups would take two old coconuts, strip off some of the fibres from the husk and use the strands to tie the shells together tightly. The coconuts were very buoyant, so they made a good life preserver.
If the husk is removed from a very mature coconut and the hard shell of the nut inside is big and well-formed, it can be used to make a traditional musical instrument like the saw uu. The sound it produces is full and rich. Artisans who make Thai musical instruments are on the lookout for coconut shells like these, because once they have been fashioned into saw uu, there is a strong demand for them among discerning Thai musicians.
These attractively-formed coconut shells also have uses associated with the occult. At Buddhist temples that make auspicious objects, the shells are cut into pieces and engraved with images of Rahu eating the moon. These carvings are believed to protect those who carry them from all danger.
Villagers even have uses for coconut trees so old that they have stopped bearing fruit. They used to be used at large piers where fishing boats docked and where there were markets for selling the newly-arriving catches. Coconut tree trunks were used as buffers, so the docking boats could be tied to them to prevent them hitting the pier. Prices for coconut tree trunks increased however, as people started buying them to cut into planks for building houses. Coconut wood that is processed for construction is more durable than some hardwoods and easier to obtain.
Even seemingly useless parts of the coconut tree were once put to work. The old, dead fronds used to be tied together to make fences, although this practice has disappeared. Nowadays people prefer to strip the leaves away from the small, new fronds leaving only the central ribs, which are sold for a good price to broom-making factories.
These brooms are still found in almost every household, even in condominiums where they are used to sweep refuse that clogs drains on balconies. Thais and their coconut trees have had a close relationship that extends back through many centuries and remains strong today. It is certainly true that these familiar trees and their myriad uses make up an entire culture in themselves. n
