Thailand's Vegetarian Festival: Bangkok

It's quite a jump from my last destination focussed post on Bosnia and Herzegovina to Thailand in more ways than one. After our Balkan adventures Nick and I travelled back through the UK sampling the delights of Brighton's Goemon Ramen and Colchester's The Den at 23 along the way. We spruced up the van and handed it back to it's rightful owner and then flew halfway around the globe to hit up the vegetarian festival with a quick layover in Helsinki where I enjoyed some of the most delicious (and expensive) cakes ever. I believe that I first read about Thailand's Vegetarian Festival on one of my favourite vegan travel blogs, Vegan Miam, about two years ago and then I heard more about it from Kip, Jess and Jules and it soon snowballed and became a must visit event in my mind. Once I get fixated on something I tend to try to make it happen ASAP so I was a little sad that I missed out on 2014's festivities but that was right around the time that Nick and I were in the midst of Very Serious Decision Making followed by packing, planning and organising for our new adventures. Wow, I kinda can't believe that was over a year ago now!


If you haven't heard of the Vegetarian Festival heres the lowdown: It's a Chinese Taoist festival otherwise known as the Nine Emperor Gods festival that takes place during the first nine days of the ninth lunar month on the Chinese calendar. The epicentre is in Phuket where it was first brought to Thailand 170 years ago by a group of travelling opera singers but there are large celebrations that are worth checking out all over the place. During the nine day festivities followers welcome and then see off the nine emperor gods staying pure throughout by eating Jay food (this translates to vegan), wearing white and abstaining from sex, alcohol, impure thoughts and more. As I'm not coming at this from a religious or spiritual perspective the festival piqued my interest because of the amount of vegan street stalls and convenience foods that pop up. Add to that the sheer number of food courts and chain restaurants that participate as well as the ritual body modifications (former body piercer here!) some of the participants inflict upon themselves and each other in the name of respect for the gods and you have the makings of something truly fascinating. Interested yet?

During the festival you'll be able to spot the vegan food by keeping an eye out for the yellow and red Jay flags appearing all over the place. As I touched on earlier the word Jay pretty much translates to vegan in Thai. People sticking to a Jay diet also abstain from garlic, onions and potatoes because to eat them means killing the plant so if you want your food to be more flavourful it may be better to tell people what you won't eat but, that said, telling people that you eat "gin jay" is often the easier and more understood option. Jay signs and flags are pretty prominent the rest of the year on convenience foods and soy milk drinks as well as outside Jay eateries all over the country but they explode during the festival. I saw them everywhere, at the mall, in the windows of chain restaurants, poking out of piles of dried mock meat at the markets, all over the place! On the flags below the Thai Jay symbol is in the top right corner and looks a little like the number 17. The symbol in the centre at the top of the flags has the same meaning but is in Chinese.


You need to be a little careful when you're perusing street stalls and food courts as sometimes there will be lacto vegetarian stalls mixed in with the ones participating with the festival 100% but you can usually spot these as they won't have all of the flags and / or will have cans of condensed milk prominently displayed. If you want to double check just ask if the food is Jay and you'll most likely be understood.

The festival takes place all over Thailand with festivities amplifying and intensifying as you travel south, Bangkok is of course a must-visit with festivities centred around Yarowat Road in the heart of Chinatown, but, as I said before, Phuket is the epicentre. The parades there amp up notch due to the larger Thai Chinese population and I have a post on that coming up soon! In the meantime check out Rika's post on Phuket's street food from 2013.

I'm no Thai food expert and I'm not going to pretend to be but from what I understand the food sold at street stands during the festival is heavily Chinese influenced which you can tell by the predominance of bao (steamed buns) and dim sum like shao mai and lotus leaf wrapped lo mai gai. These are up there with my favourite foods ever so I spent an awful lot of time eating my way through vegetable and shiitake mushroom bao from this stand as well as little dumplings like the ones pictured below.

I had to skip the chilli soy sauce but I was, of course, always prepared with my own bottle of soy sauce!

One thing that photos can't really convey is just how busy (and hot!) it is at night during the festival. People queue four deep to get to the most exciting stalls or pull up to their favourites on scooters or motorbikes, some going as far as to place their orders out of the window of their air conditioned cars. Mock meats are a festival mainstay and some of the busiest stalls had tonnes of interesting looking options on display.


This soup was one of my favourite dishes of the whole festival, ladled from a huge fragrant cauldron-like pot, thick and almost gravy like, brimming with chunks of tofu and bread-like baked wheat gluten, and topped off with plenty of white pepper and coriander it was hearty, filling and flavourful. I wish I knew what it was so that I could look up recipes and try to recreate it one day!


Something I didn't expect to find in amongst the stalls selling Thai and Chinese influenced cuisine was a stall selling vegan Japanese Takoyaki. So cool! As a former fish lover who only got into Japanese food after switching to a vegan diet I'd always wanted to try these. They're usually stuffed with octopus, covered in mayo and sprinkled with dried bonito so they're decidedly un-vegan-friendly. I couldn't wait to dig into this cruelty free version.





Everything in the case was clearly labelled and there were even separate trays and tongs for you to use. Looking at the case now I wish we'd tried more things but at the time we were already SO STUFFED! I had a small mung bean bun and Nick tried one of the doughnut rings.