Officials announcing the
schedule for this year’s Vegetarian Festival are visited by a friendly
lion.
Staff reporters
The Sawang Boriboon Foundation knows the secret to good cooking
is once that you have a popular recipe, don’t change it. It takes the
same approach to its annual Pattaya Vegetarian Festival.
So this year’s festival, which runs Sept. 23 to Oct. 3, will play out
much the same way as in recent years, with parades, Chinese ceremonies,
games and activities, and plenty of wholesome, meat-free foods.
Pattaya Deputy Mayor Wattana Chantanawaranon and foundation Vice
President Prasith Thongthicharoen met Sept. 9 to put the final touches
on preparations before announcing the schedule of events to the public
Sept. 15 at Central Festival Pattaya Beach.
The festival opens at foundation headquarters in Naklua at 4 p.m. Sept.
23, with former Culture Minister Sonthaya Kunplome and local politicians
on hand. The event will feature “eng-ko” traditional Chinese
performances and a huge “Five Auspicious Celestial Rice” dish, cooked in
a giant frying pan.
The rice recipe will be a pungent one, chock full of garlic, onion,
garlic chives, tobacco and Chinese onion. The dish will be free for
everyone attending. But before food is served, everyone will parade
through Pattaya.
The annual dual-pronged “Kiew Aung Huk Jow” and “Bhodistava” parade
kicks off at Bali Hai Pier at 9:19 a.m. and runs up Walking Street. The
parade group then splits, with one parade turning right at the entrance
of Walking Street up towards Wat Chai Mongkol intersection, then turning
left onto 2nd Road up to Central Road, and turning right on to the
corner of Central & Third Road where the people will get on a bus to go
to Wat Sawang Fah in Naklua.
The second group continues on Beach Road up to Central Road, turn right,
meets up with the other group at the Tops intersection and continues on
to the corner of third Road where the people will get onto the bus at go
to Wat Sawang Fah in Naklua.
Beach Road will be closed from 12.30 hrs until 15.00 hrs. One lane of
Second Road will close for as long as the parade needs to pass through.
There also will be food booths offering a wide range of products, some
familiar, some not. A few look like meat, but are, in fact, tofu. There
are plenty of sweets as well, such as donettes coated in honey.
Vegetarian festivals have a long tradition in Thailand. Chinese-Thais
will leave their daily businesses aside, visit temples to make merit,
eat only vegetarian foods, and refrain from conducting any acts that
would lead to the taking of lives, blood and meat. They also wear white
while visiting temples with candles and flowers to make merit for
animals.
The festival is seen as a chance to cleanse the body, with large
vegetarian meals eaten only every other day, usually at temples. The
other days people eat only one or two light meals at home.
