Thumps Up For The Thai Army. Thai Army Confiscates Asiatic Black Bears from Tiger Temple.

Newspaper article about the bear rescue. Notice how the media portrays serious animal issues in a "funny" way with a clever word joke in its headline. I guess it would be too much for the readers to be confronted with a more serious, and more accurate headline such as "Thai Monks Caught In Illegal Trade Of Protected Animals."

Finally justice prevails for some of our furry friends who were being held captive illegally at the famous Tiger temple in Thailand.

Asiatic Black Bears are a protected species yet Thai monks did keep 6 of them in tiny cages (to see how shockingly tiny see the photo)  on a display for paying visitors.

One Fine Afternoon In The Bookshop.

Various full color attractive veg cooking books are displayed in B2S. In Thailand basically there is the well know “Jay” which is Buddhist food without any animal ingredient just like vegan food, and also some specific herbs like garlic are not used for health reasons (related to traditional Chinese medicine), and the lesser popular “Mangsawirat”, which means lacto ovo vegetarian and has no connection with a religion.

The book in the middle is Mangsawirat. It looks trendy and goes with the modern “eat less meat” trend. Great job!

The book at the right, look at that! My fav!! A Jay food recipe book with great tasty vegan recipes and attractive full color photos. The yellow Jay sign cleverly is not in the usual old fashioned  Chinese style but a modern Thai style font. The sub title reads “Vegan Food”. That’s right! It is vegan food; no animal ingredients  for ethical reasons just like us western vegans. 

Thai Ruralish Wildlife Part 2

from left to right
1. Toad taking a dip in the water bowl of the cat. No matter i bring it outside, the next evening it is back in the water! A homing toad!!
2. A giant female walking stick with a small sized, and hardly noticeable, male walking stick on her back in the process of mating. Enjoy the fun, you little fellow!!

3. A 7 inch centipede is no laughing matter. They can creep everywhere including, as they did one time, in the bed, and deliver a nasty bite.

Teddy The Turtle

from left to right:
1. Meet Teddy The Turtle!
2. Teddy inspects his new home.
3. And there Teddy goes, in the cool water, happy as can be.

Giving a helping hand to our animal friends in need always makes my day. :-)

Today I did find a turtle in a big bucket of the neighbor.                 

Not sure if the neighbor did found the turtle and wanted to release it in a river, you might be surprised but that was a real possibility; releasing an animal is common in Thailand and is done as a Buddhist virtue of kindness to animals, or that the neighbor had more sinister plans with Teddy the Turtle, as in, cooking it for dinner.

I didn’t plan to wait and find out, , so I took my hard shelled new friend on the bike to a nearby river.

Thai Ruralish Wildlife

Currently I live in the Northeast of Thailand, in a ruralish place at the edge of a local village, squeezed between a local road and some wildly exciting rice fields. Sigh.

If I would go on a nightly stroll in America or good old Europe, I might expect to have some interesting encounters with medium sized mammals like maybe a fox, a skunk, a foraging raccoon, or a hedgehog who, thanks to his protective needles, isn’t too shy and can be easily approached.

Not here in ruralish Thailand. I never did spot any exciting medium sized wild life on a nocturnal walk.

Vegetarian Festival Thailand

Each year Thailand celebrates the Vegetarian Festival nation wide. Millions of people eat veg during these ten days. Vegetarian stands for food free of any animal ingredient so this is in fact the world's largest Vegan festival.

Next week the Kin Jay Festival starts here in Thailand. A big advertisement at the entrance of a Buddhist temple lets everybody knows about it!

Temple Kittens And The Thai Way Of Adopting Pets.

My son and me we are confronted with a litter of kittens in the rural temple where we daily go to play and do exercise.

We do what most Thai people would do, feed it, but don’t take them home, the temple is their home.

People with a surplus of kittens or puppies often put the animals somewhere, keep an eye out for them, until some friendly neighborhood person adopts the animal.

Adopting doesn’t mean taking it home and “owning” the animal.

It means you take responsibility but let the animal where you found it. Feed it daily, and maybe give veterinary care or sterilize it, as I have found out regular Thai people do it this way.

I know it is not as good as western animal lovers who don’t allow stry animals on the street but  lovingly put them  in concrete solitaire cells or, the most sacred act of true love amongst certain animal defenders, gently put it to death with a lethal injection…I guess the Thai aren’t that civilized yet. SIGH.

Feeding The Fish On A Hot Afternoon.

What is more fun than to bicycle to your nearest Buddhist temple and feed the fish, eh? (rhetorical question.)

For a mere ten Thai Baht the machine spits out a bucket of fish food.

Why feeding fish at a Buddhist temple? Because kindness to animals is a Buddhist virtue.

Vegan Street Foods

On markets and streets there are usually ready-to-eat foods available that are suitable for vegans.

From left to right.

Whole fruits according to the seasons  are available in Thailand just about at any street corner. More easy to eat in the streets are the already cut portions of fruits sold by vendors with little push carts.

This snack is made from cocosmilk and flour, topped with various veg toppings like corn and chopped onion.

Colorful snacks like this in plastic bags are typical Thai style sweets and are made with cocomilk, not cow milk.

Yummy yummy! Fried bananas and taro still dripping with palm oil, just like modern Thai people like!

The vegan Jay restaurants in Thailand

Introduction.

All over Thailand there are Jay restaurants. They serve humble Buddhist vegan foods buffet style for a cheap price. Bangkok has dozens of Jay restaurants and many other Thai cities have one or more Jay restaurants.
Originally the Jay kitchen was introduced to Thailand by Buddhist Chinese immigrants. Nowadays Jay restaurants are integrated in Thai culture. The number of Jay restaurants is growing.

“Jay” food should not be confused with the “Jain” food from India.

Jay shops usually have screamy and flashy festive and colorful yellow red signs with the Chinese character for "strict vegetarian" and the Thai letters "Jay" often in Chinese style. "Vegetarian" and recently "vegan" are also used.

The philosophy of the Jay kitchen.

The philosophy of the Jay kitchen is rooted in both Chinese Buddhism and the traditional Chinese medicine.
When I did write the Bangkok Vegan Restaurant Pocketguide I was able to meet and talk with many owners of Jay restaurants. “Animals can feel pain just like us, it is wrong to kill them.”  and similar phrases I heard a lot. One Jay restaurant in Bangkok showed a poster ; “Animals are my friends, and I don’t eat my friends.”
Out of the Buddhist compassion for all living beings, no animal ingredients are used. No meat, fish, eggs, milk, or honey. Like in most Chinese vegetarian restaurants in South East Asia, the Jay restaurants decorate their shop with images of the Guanyin (aka Kwam Im),  the Bodhisattva associated with Compassion.

The Jay kitchen also avoids five different kind of plants for health reasons. Tobacco is unhealthy for your lungs, garlic is supposed to be unhealthy for your heart, onions  for your kidney, Chinese chives for your liver.
Alternatively, white beans are good for your lungs, red beans for your heart, green beans for your liver, and black beans for your kidneys.

from left to right

1. Free "Jay" book sometimes available in Jay restaurants.

2. "I don't eat my friends." 

3. Explaining about the unhealthy effects of 5 particular herbs on the internal organs.

4. A cow is shedding tears when a woman wants to butcher it.

The JAY sign.

The Jay sign is a bright yellow colored surface with a red Chinese character meaning “strict vegetarian”, and the word Jay written in Thai language, also in the color red. Often the Thai letters are stylized in Chinese style.
Not only the Jay restaurants carry this easy-to-recognize sign but also many ordinary supermarket food products that are vegan have a tiny “Jay” label. The Jay symbol is widely recognized by all Thai people.

1. A plate of white rice with two toppings for 35 Baht.

2. A bowl of Yeng Tau Foo with yellow fried noodles, mock fish balls, mock slices of beef and fried tofu.

Visiting a Jay restaurant.

With their big yellow red signs a Jay restaurant is easy to spot and hard to miss. When you enter the Jay restaurant you go to the buffet to order.
The typical jay dish is a plate of white rice with one, two, or three toppings of your choice from the buffet. You simple order with a “laat kaaow” which means you want rice with topping, and point to the toppings of your choice.
And don’t worry, ALL the food in the buffet is vegan. If you see some white liquids, it is coconut milk and not cow milk. Yellow noodles are not “egg” noodles, they are vegan.

The lingo for ordering a plate of rice with toppings:

Plate of rice with 1 topping : Laat kaaow nung yaang.
Plate of rice with 2 toppings : Laat kaaow soong yaang.
Plate of rice with 3 toppings : laat kaaow saam yaang.

The price for a plate of rice with one topping is at the moment 30 Baht, two toppings 35 Baht, 3 toppings 40 Baht.

After ordering, you can take a seat at a table and somebody will bring you your dish. Don’t pay yet, when you finished your meal and are ready to leave you can pay.

Besides a buffet with 5 to 10 options, a Jay restaurants usually has noodle soup and some other dishes.

Usually a Jay restaurant has cold water plus ice free of charge self service. A jug of cold water on your table is free of charge but a bottle of mineral water on your table is not free of charge. Don’t open it and you won’t be charged.
Home made juices are available in the refrigerator.

Often Jay restaurants have a big freezer stuffed with high quality mock meats for sale, ranging from fish to burgers to chicken nuggets. If you have opportunity to cook at your lodging you might consider buying a few.
A pack of frozen mock meats usually sell for around or under 100 Baht.

1. Some Jay restaurants have a bilengual  English Thai menu.

2. A buffet with ten options.

3. A tray with fried mock meats.Mock meats are originally a Chinese food.

4. A table with take options like sandwiches, spring rolls, and cookies.

Other vegan Jay products that might be for sale in a Jay restaurants are dried soy proteins, boxes of nori, dried noodles, etc. Sometimes small round cans of mock meats are for sale. These might be handy when traveling around as a vegan snack or topping for a plate of white rice.

In general Jay shops open early, which is good for the early birds among us, and close in the late afternoon or very early evening. Jay shops might be closed on Saturdays and or Sundays.

“There is cow milk in the refridgerator !!”
Sometimes between the juices and the soymilk, there is cow milk available in the refrigerator of some Jay shops. And occasionally I spot a bottle of honey for sale in the Jay shop.
That of course raises fears that maybe also the food in that and other Jay restaurants might occasionally not be strict vegan. But that is not the case. ALL food offered in a Jay restaurant is Jay, vegan, absolutely no milk or eggs or honey are used. ALL the food in the buffet and on the menu is Jay, vegan, always.
It is simply that some products that are sold which are not Jay, not vegan, like milk or honey, but never meat or fish. Again, these products might occasionally be sold but are never used as ingredients for the meals in the Jay restaurant.

1. Don't try to impress her with a "I am already 5 year vegan!". She is a 20+ vegan herself, like many other Jay restaurant owners. :-)

3. The image of Guanyin (or "Kwam Im") is displayed in most Jay restaurants.

4. Jay restaurants often have a food corner with canned mock meats, soy protein, noodles, nori, and more.

While in Thailand, support your local Jay shop and enjoy the vegan meal and vegan vibes !