Vegetarian festival in Bangkok's Chinatown

For 51 weeks per year, it's not easy to be a serious vegetarian in Thailand. Most so-called salads are actually plates of ground pork or calamari in a spicy chili-lime sauce. Ask for something vegetarian or jay and it often still comes full of fish sauce,  sometimes with chunks of meat. But for nine days in each fall, keeping vegetarian can be surprisingly easy.

The Kin Jay Vegetarian Festival is a time of spiritual cleansing for Chinese-Thai Buddhists in September or October. There are ten rules for purification during the festival, among them no alcohol, no sex, and no meat.  To help folks take meat out of their diets, vendors around the city create vegetarian and some vegan dishes and alert passersby with yellow flags.

In Bangkok, the biggest celebration of Kin Jay takes place is the Chinatown street fair. Dozens of stalls line Yaowarat Road, all selling vegetarian treats.

I spent a giddy three hours in Chinatown with my coworkers on Saturday, most of the time spent snacking and strolling. All the dishes were under 100 baht/$3, and the eye candy almost equaled the real candy.

 
Our snacks tended to disappear pretty quickly, but I snagged a few shots.

Freshly pressed sugar cane juice, which is amazingly light and drinkable:

Marinated mushrooms over chewy rice-flour cups:

Spiced rice with beans, carrots, and cooked gingko biloba, all steamed in taro leaves:

One of my favorite dishes was a vegan soup from a vendor that normally sells the same broth with about five types of pork:

With something this warm and filling, you'd never miss the meat. The tofu, mushrooms, wide rice noodles, and fried dough soak up the aromatic broth, and the cilantro adds a refreshing kick. It also helped that this was one of only two places where we sat down.

The other was a little dessert stand where I learned something important. Apparently, bird phlegm counts as vegetarian.  Made from rock sugar, water, and the hardened saliva of a swallow, bird's nest soup is pretty innocuous, as long as you don't think about what you're eating, which is this:

My Malaysian coworker Celina swears that it does wonders for your skin. "It's like drinking collagen," as she described it. Drinking collagen didn't sound particularly appealing to me either, but Celina has gorgeous skin so I gave it a go. Mine had some cooked gingko at the bottom, so it can make me smart too.

At base level, it's a lot like other syrupy desserts here. The texture of the re-softened spit strings was the worst part, but after a few minutes I got to chatting and barely noticed that I had finished the bowl.

I'm pretty sure that my skin looked brighter on Sunday.

Until next time, peace, from a giant dancing soy bean oil mascot:

In Thailand, isn't it just called 'pad'?

Pad Thai (Thai-style stir-fried noodles) is a classic for a reason. It's the perfect crave-able dish for days that are too hot for a spicy curry or pork dish. You can find the meal at tons of street stalls around the city. Good clues that a vendor serves pad Thai are a basket of bean sprouts and a wok.

I bought my inaugural pad Thai in Thailand for 25 baht/83 cents from a vendor with little plastic tables outside Chatuchak Weekend Market. Every table has condiments so you can have yours just the way you like it: salty, spicy, fishy, nutty, etc.

Clockwise from top left: Fish sauce, dried chilies, chili sauce with vinegar, crushed peanuts

The stand next door had set up tables of lovely fresh veggies.

If I had a complaint about the dish, it would be that no one puts enough egg in pad Thai. Fried egg soaks up the sauce and adds a little saltiness without extra fish sauce--which is delicious, but can overwhelm the other flavors. 

I found the solution at Tang-O, a kitschy roadside cafe a few doors down from my apartment.

Not enough egg? Just wrap the whole thing in a warm, fluffy egg blanket. That's right, I found a pad Thai omelet.

A bonus of this dish is that you feel a little bit like you're opening a present when you eat it. It's the same type of joy I get at slicing into a molten-chocolate cake or biting into a Poptart. There's a little gooey goodness inside.

Apparently you can find this at street stalls too, but Tang-O's version was expertly crafted (65 baht/$2.16). The omelet was light and surprisingly not greasy, and the noodles had extra sauce to balance the spongy egg.

What's That Fruit and How Do I Eat It? (Second Installment)

Eating the so-called forbidden fruit is one of the less adventurous things to do in Bangkok. You can find heaps of mangosteens on street corners all around town for about 20 to 30 baht per kilo (roughly 30 to 45 cents per pound). But for me, indulging in these creamy, sweet fruits is the single best perk of living in Thailand.

What's that fruit?

Slightly larger than a clementine, the mangosteen may be the world's most delicious fruit. Once outlawed in the mainland United States because of tropical pests, it is now legal but difficult and costly to ship overseas. I would argue that one bite is worth the ticket to Southeast Asia.

With a taste somewhere between a kiwi and a piña colada, the white pods are simultaneously juicy and milky. I'm embarrassed to admit how quickly I can go through a two-pound bag.

How do I eat it?

Opening a mangosteen is almost as fun as eating it. One helpful tip: Try not to think about how much the shell looks like a womb. Then you're good to go.

Run a dull knife (or your thumbnail, if you are too impatient to find a knife) along middle of the circumference, and pull the two halves apart.

To politely eat one, you can use a fork to pull out the pods. Usually the larger sections will have a fat seed, which is bitter if you chew it. You can eat around it or spit it out.

If you're alone in your apartment with a two-pound bag, you can just use your teeth to pull the fruit out.

7-11 Finds

Before I came to Bangkok, I thought 7-11 was as American as apple pie. I even bought a cherry Slurpee as my last taste of the States before my flight out of New York.

It turns out I was wrong. 7-11 is actually as Thai as a curry-filled bun, which are lined up in little steaming cases like taquitos in American branches. Branches are everywhere here, and the city has made the franchise its own.

To date, my two most intriguing Thai 7-11 finds are as follows:

1. Pork Bun-Flavored Potato Chips

Verdict: Gross. The first bite is interesting; the second bite makes you ill; and the pork-powder stays on your fingers through several washings. They are 35 baht ($1.11), two for 70 baht ($1.90), but you should never, ever get two.

2. Corn Yogurt

Verdict: My lactose-intolerance saved me from trying this, but at 13 baht (40 cents), it can't be a huge waste.

In case you are wondering, you can get Slurpees here, too.

One More Thing to Check off My Bucket List

Here’s an interesting lesson: If you are dehydrated, you can get drunk off two beers.

Here’s another lesson: If you are drunk in Bangkok, it is possible your new friends will succeed in inviting you to eat some local delicacies, such as this creature.



Then maybe you order another beer and polish off a bag of local delicacies.



In retrospect, it was a pretty big bag. It was filled with barbecued crickets and frogs (eaten whole), which Ace and I apparently enjoyed.









The frogs were actually pretty tasty, smokey and savory like beef jerky, but crispy and easy-to-bite like soft-shell crab.

The grasshoppers I regretted in the morning. I ate them as if they were Pringles, but now I have a clear memory that they were closer to thin plastic tubes full of dirt and salt. With legs.

Just when I thought we were finished, Ace brought out a second course of ants in a chili-lime sauce served with scallions, scooped up with Thai basil leaves.



Before I moved to Thailand, I had a theory that anything in a chili-lime sauce had to be delicious. Theory proved. The bugs, even the queen ant pictured, just added extra crunch to the flavorful salad. I would eat that again.

But I might need three beers to get started.


Note: Many thanks to Kob for taking the photos for this post, and for continuing to date Ace after watching him eat bugs.

What's That Fruit and How Do I Eat It? (First Installment)

Bangkok streets have so many distractions (snack vendors, motorbikes, ladyboys) that it's pretty hard for any one item to capture my full attention. But every time I walked by a fruit stand full of these Seussical balls, I could not stop thinking about them. What were they? If you open them, will you find Who-ville?


I brought a bag (30 baht/$1 for a kilo) to my office, and my coworkers were kind enough to help me eat them and answer a few pressing questions.

What's that fruit?
That fruit is rambutan! Similar to lychee, it has a firm, pearly fruit inside, which tastes somewhere between a skinless grape and a pineapple gummy bear. Rambut means hairy in Malaysia, where the fruit originated.



How do I eat it?
You can slice the shell with a knife if you're classy. If you are sneaking a snack at work, you can push your thumbnail into the middle of the shell, then pull the two halves apart. My coworker Khun Pam prefers sticking her fingernail in a little, and then squeezing the middle.


When I tried it, juice squirted all over a report I was supposed to be reading. But the peeling method is easy.

There is a little seed inside, which you eat around.




That's a lot of work for a couple square inches of fruit, is it worth it?
Yes, rambutan is delicious! Plus, opening them makes reading reports more enjoyable.

Glamor shot:

First Bites at Kasetsart University

During my first two days in Bangkok, I ate about a dozen meals, all worthy of my first blog post. Could it be possible that I've found an entire city that enjoys snacking, dipping sauces, and street meat as much as I do? Maybe more?

My happiest surprise so far is that I haven't eaten anything that has not been delicious. Case in point: dining hall food. In the United States, a college meal plan conjures memories of dry burgers and greasy omelets only palatable when hungover. My first meal at Kasetsart University's Science Canteen, a block from my new office, couldn't have been farther from my old John Jay dining hall.



A canteen is like a food court for college kids here. There are about ten vendors selling noodles, soups, meat and rice dishes, curries, desserts, etc. You can get a couple items and bring them to your picnic table to eat with friends.



During my first canteen excursion, I used the point-and-nod method of ordering to get a delicious appetizer of hand-made kanom jeeb dumplings.


Kanom jeeb dumplings are kind of like Japanese shrimp shumai, bite-sized and dipped in a vinegary soy sauce. But the Thai version is stuffed with shrimp and pork, then topped with toasted garlic. These cost 20 baht, or about 60 cents.

For my second course, I couldn't decide between chicken and pork, so I pointed at both. Each was chopped and sauteed with garlic, chillies, and basil. My greediness set me back another 20 baht (60 cents).

The best part is, you can cover your rice in condiments, such as sweet and sour sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, etc.

My dessert choice may be a surprise, but this was too cool to pass up because of a minor infliction of lactose-intolerance: vanilla ice cream, 30 baht (95 cents).

What, vanilla ice cream? Not even red bean?

The cool part is the food delivery system, or how to get the ice cream into your mouth. Mine came on a hot dog roll with sweetened sticky rice, a drizzle of chocolate shell, and a candied sweet potato topping. Thanks, Lactaid!



If I keep eating like this here, I'm pretty sure I'll end up like this fat stray dog who sleeps outside my office.


How'd he get so chubby?