Nuts to Us

The most interesting part of our tour in Phuket, Thailand, was a visit to a cashew factory.  Every cashew tree produces a few hundred fruits, but each fruit has only one nut.

A ripe fruit with the nut in the shell at the bottom

After the fruit is picked and the nut broken off the bottom, it is cracked, one at a time, using a foot controlled press.  The operator places the nut, lowers the press to crack the nut and uses a tool like a small ice pick to open and remove the nut. 

Cleaning the nut

When she has a bowl full, another person scrapes off the remainder of the husk and separates the whole nuts from halves and pieces.  No wonder cashews are so expensive.  Nuts are roasted and may be flavored or left plain.  We tasted all the flavors including sour cream & onion, seaweed (nori,) BBQ, wasabi, tom yum (what ever that is,) sesame, honey sesame, chocolate and spicy.  They also sold all sorts of dried fruit, dried fish snacks and dried shrimp, all available for tasting.



We went through a local market with our guide explaining some of the many things we did not recognize and telling us how they are used.



Very interesting, but I would hate to have to fight the crowds every day to get food for each meal.  Betel nuts are used in cooking.

















I have no idea why some of the eggs are red.

We did see this cute "street art."

A temple and a shrine were on the agenda, of course.  You have seen enough of my pictures of these, so I will just include a couple of "artistic" shots.