Rice, Part 1: Eat Rice

(Note: I’m calling this Part 1, because I will probably add more blogs about rice at some point in the future)

Rice with kap khao
(กับข้าว-food that goes with rice)

Rice is an important part of Thai culture.


Rice is by far the most important crop grown in the country, and until some bizarre government policies changed things a couple of years ago, Thailand had for years been the worlds leading rice exporter.

The importance of rice shows up in how the Thai people view eating and even the way the word rice is used.

The phrase eat rice (กินข้าว kin khao) is synonymous with to eat a meal.  When Thai people greet each other, instead of saying, “How are you?” like we might do in America, they will often say “Have you eaten rice yet” (กินข้าวแล้วหรือยัง kin khao laew ruer yang).

The Thai people often eat rice, in some form or another, three times a day. For morning it might be rice soup.  Then it might be soup with rice noodles for lunch and steamed rice or sticky rice for dinner.

For many Thai people, unless they have had rice, they feel like they have not eaten.  One of our missionaries tells of an occasion when the youth got together for a pizza party.  When it was over, it was time to go eat because—you guessed it—they had not had rice yet.

Eating Pizza-Not Real Food

Today I was at a store with one of our co-workers.  The store had two main eating establishments—a KFC and a food court.  The food court had many individual booths each selling some variety of Thai food. Since it was lunch time, I asked our co-worker if she wanted to eat at KFC or the food court.  She said she wanted to “eat rice”, implying that she wanted to eat at the food court (the french fries at KFC just aren't same, I guess).

So I went to one vendor and got some crab fried rice.  She went to another and got noodle soup.  I mentioned to her that I’m not sure I will ever understand Thai people.  Here she did not want to eat at KFC, but instead she wanted to “eat rice”.  But then she ends up getting soup. (By the way, there are some rice options at KFC.  You can even get fried chicken with rice, something many people will buy on the street.)

My take home from this is that for some people, the phrase “eat rice”  may mean eating the kinds of food they are used to as opposed to foreign food.

As for us, we are okay if we don’t eat rice three times a day, in fact, we have rarely ever done so.  Also, when we buy food on the street, we will often not get rice with it.  Rather, we will cook our own brown rice at home which has a bit more nutritional value than the steamed white rice or sticky rice sold on the street.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.  (1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV)

Happy eating.