Phuket Vegetarian Festival 2017

A couple of weeks ago I touched down in Phuket ready to eat my way around the Vegetarian Festival for the second time. I was last there two years ago and I wrote a couple of pretty substantial posts about the festival food in Phuket and about the vegan eats you can find at convenience stores dotted all over the country. This years fest' was quieter and a lot more chilled (there were very minimal fireworks this time around and no large processions) because the country was still in mourning for the king so my blog post is going to be more laid back too. This year Nick and I met up with our friend Cici (read her post about the festival here) and did a whole lot of eating, drinking, and hanging out. Like her I'm going to focus on my very favourite eats of 2017's festival rather than posting every single thing I ate because that might be a little overwhelming! Without further ado, here are my 2017 Phuket Vegetarian Festival Faves.

Favourite Stall - The faux meat place on the corner

About halfway up Ranong Road on the left (if you're coming from the roundabout) is a stall in front of a building on a corner which sells mock meats. If you've reached the turnoff towards Jui Tui Shrine you've gone too far. They have so many meats to choose from including three kinds of faux fish, my favourite. Inside the building they have even more faux meats as well as curries and veggies and you can eat there or takeaway. We decided to eat there one lunchtime and we were all very impressed. 

I just noticed that mine and Nick's plates are almost exactly the same!

The range of mock meats you can choose from is almost overwhelming and I got three kinds. A black pepper steak, a saucy mock duck, and some red pork. They were all really flavourful and very different texturally. These are up there with the best mock meats I've ever eaten. The faux fishes were all excellent too; one had a great texture but it was really salty so you had to eat it with something else, rice or bread, to stop it being too much, another had a drier texture but the flavour was excellent and lastly, my very favourite of the three, was this yuba faux fish which had both the texture and flavour nailed.

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?