5 Best local cuisines you can try in Koh Samui - Savour the mouth-watering flavours of the idyllic Thai island

A familiar Thai dish to taste buds outside Thailand, flavourful Pad Thai is a great start to your exploration of local cuisine. While you may have gobbled up tons of the stir-fried rice noodles dish from the takeout Pad Thai place back at home, don't pass up the opportunity to see if the world-renowned dish is any different in its birthplace. The ingredients that typically join the rice noodles on a steaming hot plate of Pad Thai are shrimp, peanuts, scrambled eggs, and bean sprouts. The dish wouldn't be complete without the addition of sugar, tamarind, lime juice, vinegar, and the tangy fish sauce, which gives its intricate combination of sweet, sour, and salty flavours.

It would be a pity to fly halfway across the world to Thailand and devour only some takeout Pad Thai. For the truly adventurous, give Malang Tod a try and treat yourself to a truly authentic experience. Thailand's most bizarre dish features fried crickets, beetles, worms, grasshoppers, and various other insects, laid out on street side stalls rather humorously, inviting you to put your taste buds to the test to savour the mind-bogglingly outlandish flavours. You would find it surprising and surely interesting that the tourists waiting in queue to grab a bite of the crunchy delicacy outnumber the locals.

Tom for boiled and Yum for mixed, Tom Yum is one of the best-known soups of Thai cuisine. A spoonful of the steaming hot, spicy, sour, and aromatic soup is truly breathtaking. A slew of ingredients, including shrimp, mushrooms, shallots, lime, lemongrass, ginger, and hot chilli peppers, come together to make a bowl of flavoursome Tom Yum. Traditionally, the soup is served as an appetiser as well as an accompaniment to fluffy white rice.

In its basic form, Som Tam is shredded unripe green papaya mixed with roasted peanuts, green beans, and tomatoes in a bowl, with a tangy sauce poured over. It is one of the easiest and simplest dishes in Thai cuisine, yet the taste of the crunchy strips of green papaya combined with the rest of the ingredients is unmatchable by any other. The salad is believed to have originated in neighbouring Laos, but there's no taking Som Tam away from Thais now.

Top off your traditional Thai meal with a traditional Thai dessert — Khao Niaow Ma Muang or popularly known as mango sticky rice is a delectable dessert favoured by locals and tourists alike. It can be found being served at most Koh Samui restaurants offered by properties such as Avani+ Samui Resort, and eateries of other forms as well.