I love a food festival, but as a vegetarian, I usually face limited options. Not this week! My own little neighborhood and Bangkok’s bustling Chinatown celebrated the nine-day Tesagan Gin Je Festival, an annual event that honors the Taoist Nine Emperor Gods with a strict vegan diet.
The festival occurs annually during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar. This year’s event wraps up today. According to the Thailand Now website:
The Thai Vegetarian Festival is believed to have originated in Phuket, specifically the district of Kathu. The origin story begins in 1825, when a Chinese opera troupe visited the Andaman Pearl, and a few members fell hopelessly ill.
In a desperate attempt to protect its members, the rest of the group maintained an exclusively vegan diet out of respect to the Nine Emperor Gods of Taoism, thought to have the power to heal illnesses. Whether by coincidence or divine veganism, the Chinese opera troupe recovered and the rest is history.
As the story spread, so did the belief that the Nine Emperor Gods visit earth to bless people during this festival. The rest of the year, they take their places as stars in the Big Dipper constellation.
During the festival, street vendors and restaurants hang yellow flags to indicate their vegetarian offerings. My first taste of the festival occurred Thursday in the neighborhood near my house. My Thai friend, Oon, took me to a Chinese temple, where volunteers were serving free vegetarian food three times a day.
We took a moment to light incense at the big golden Buddha, his round tummy making him distinctively Chinese compared to the slender Thai Buddha. Then Oon collected several bowls of food and brought them to me at a table. I had low expectations, considering this food was produced assembly line style. However, everything was delicious! I don’t really know what I ate other than noodles, veggies, rice, spicy papaya salad, and some tasty soup. After eating, we washed our own dishes, which seemed only fair.
I dropped a few baht in the donation box, chatted a bit with temple volunteers, and posed for a few photos. People seemed surprised that I eat vegetarian all the time. Local Buddhists generally go veg only on “Thai Buddhist Day” once a week.
On our way out, Oon grabbed a bag of snacks from a street vendor displaying the yellow flag. The snacks looked like deep-fried vegetable fritters, and they came with a lip-smacking sauce.
Eating unfamiliar food can be a stressful experience, so it’s always nice to have a person in the know to lead the way. Was I ready to face an even bigger food festival without Oon? There was only one way to find out.
Tony and I took the metro to Yaowarat, Bangkok’s Chinatown, Saturday afternoon and emerged into throngs of tourists. We wandered a bit until we came across hundreds of food stalls adorned with yellow flags. Faced with such a plethora of options, I couldn’t make any decisions. Plus we were melting in the heat. We paused to check out a temple and a shrine, and then finally I felt ready to commit.
We purchased some food and then tucked behind the vendors’ stalls, where tables and stools were set up for diners. Everything was fantastic, although our mouths nearly caught fire from Tony’s mystery dish.
We decided to pop into a restaurant to put our mouth fires out with some cold beer. The air conditioning was divine, so we ended up ordering dim sum as well. Seemed a little indulgent considering all the fabulous festival food just beyond the door, but the AC won out.
As we headed back out to the street, we felt a few rain drops, and we had just flagged down a reluctant taxi driver when the deluge started. We got out of there in the nick of time, although we still wondered whether we’d make it home. The driver sighed and groaned and complained for almost an hour, understandably, as he slowly navigated through flooded streets and near zero visibility.
What a relief to get home with a full heart and a fuller belly.
