Rawai Seafood Market

Rawai Seafood Market is probably the biggest experience of its kind on Phuket Island. The market is open every day from 11 to 21 hours. A long time ago, it started from a humble fishing village where a few food stalls started cooking fish caught directly from the fishermen along the beach. Such an idea was fun and the tourists liked it. Today it is a major tourist destination. You can choose your favorite seafood from the fishmongers and take it to nearby restaurants where it is cooked for a moderate fee. The range of seafood available is almost unbelievable. Next to the majestic and quite expensive lobsters, you can try something exotic, such as Yam Kai Mangda Talay, horseshoe crab salad. This is an unusual dish made from horseshoe crab eggs and served inside the shell of the crab itself. Horseshoe crab is one of the creatures, like pufferfish, which must be prepared carefully, because most parts of the crab is poisonous. The eggs are the only part of the horseshoe crab that you can actually eat. In Asia, it is used as an aphrodisiac. In fact, the horseshoe crab isn’t really a crab at all, it’s a prehistoric sea creature more closely related to scorpions. Based on fossil discoveries, scientists believe that this creature has existed for millions of years. Another strange thing about the horseshoe crab is that its blood is blue and very rich in copper. Crab has been widely used in ancient and modern medicine. The horseshoe crab has been used to develop a flu vaccine and to study human eyes and treat optical diseases.