One afternoon following my tour of the ancient city of Ayutthaya, my guide Annie asked our driver to pull over at a small roadside stand.
From the comfort of my air-conditioned car seat, the place didn’t look particularly remarkable. But after a morning spent wandering temple ruins under the Thai sun, stretching my legs sounded like an excellent idea.
As it turns out, it was.
The stand itself was fairly small, but it was packed with hundreds of items for sale. At first, I didn’t notice anything unusual. Then a pattern began to emerge.
Every single item was made from coconut.
Everything.
I don’t mean a few coconut snacks and some tourist trinkets. I mean soaps, oils, brushes, ropes, mats, bowls, candies, cooking ingredients, beauty products, and enough assorted coconut-related merchandise to make me wonder if I’d accidentally wandered into the Coconut Hall of Fame.
Growing up in a small town in Central Oregon, my knowledge of coconuts came primarily from candy bars, grocery stores, and the occasional rerun of Gilligan’s Island. As far as I knew, coconuts were things that fell out of palm trees and occasionally bonked cartoon characters on the head.
I was wildly underqualified for this conversation.
What I learned that afternoon is that the coconut may be one of the most useful plants on Earth.
You have probably heard of coconut water and coconut milk. You may have even enjoyed fresh coconut meat straight from the shell. But that’s just the beginning.
In Thailand, coconut finds its way into curries, soups, desserts, sauces, candies, baked goods, and countless other dishes. It’s one of the defining ingredients of Southeast Asian cuisine.
Then there’s coconut oil.
It won’t help much if your transmission starts making funny noises, but it has an astonishing number of other uses. People cook with it, fry with it, make soap from it, use it in cosmetics, lotions, shampoos, and skin-care products. Apparently, if a coconut can’t solve your problem, you may not be trying hard enough.
Even the husk gets a second career.
The fibrous outer layer, called coir, is transformed into rope, doormats, brushes, brooms, mattress stuffing, and gardening products. In fact, the next time you wipe your feet on a welcome mat, there’s a decent chance you’re standing on a former coconut.
The shell is no slouch, either.
It can be carved into bowls, buttons, decorative items, and even processed into activated charcoal used for water filtration and industrial purposes.
Talk about not wasting anything.
Back in America, we often talk about what George Washington Carver accomplished with the peanut. Here in Southeast Asia, people have been performing similar feats with coconuts for generations.
The deeper I looked, the more impressed I became.
What appears at first glance to be a simple tropical fruit is actually a source of food, building materials, household goods, personal-care products, fuel, and income for countless families throughout the region.
Not bad for something that spends most of its life hanging from a tree.
Travel has a funny way of teaching lessons where you least expect them. Sometimes it’s at a famous temple. Sometimes it’s at a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And sometimes it’s at a humble roadside stand filled with coconut products.
So if your guide ever suggests pulling over for a quick stop, don’t be too quick to decline.
You might discover that one of nature’s greatest wonders isn’t a towering monument or an ancient ruin.
It might just be a coconut.
Until next time.
