When I was backpacking through Thailand last month, finding vegetarian food was a little bit of a challenge.
Outside Bangkok and Chiang Mai, "pure" vegetarian food can be difficult to get. When you don't speak Thai, it is always a challenge trying to tell the cook not to put meat in the dishes. Even for meatless dishes, it's difficult to avoid the ubiquitous fish sauce.
All in all, I managed to get by pretty well through the 11 days. Only once, I was still served noodles with meat balls even though I thought I managed to get the cook to understand I did not want meat in it. I just picked out all the meat and passed them to my travel mates. As for the fish sauce, it was not strong enough to offend. This was in stark contrast to my experience in Cambodia, when several times, I almost puked from the strong offending meat taste in my vegetable dishes(which I suspected was from the stock).
In Thailand, there are basically two type of vegetarianism being practiced. One is known as mangsawirat, which means vegetarian. The other one is jae (or jay). This is an religious form of vegetarianism which is practised by Chinese Buddhists and Taoist but is common in Thailand as well. The main difference is that jay also excludes pungent vegetables from the allium family (i.e. onion, garlic, scallions, leeks, shallots, chives etc).
The two words are the important words you need to learn to get vegetarian food (unless you are prepared to eat from guesthouses or hotels only).
In one of my earlier trips to central Thailand a few years ago, I found that I had little difficult getting by with the word "mangsawirat". However, this time, when I was in Northeastern part of Thailand, it seemed to me that the people did not quite understand me when I say "mangsawirat".
The problem with the word jae is that some people do understand that to mean strict vegetarian food and they will just tell you "no jae!" and won't cook anything for you. It's probably because they use sauces and stock that are not vegetarian.
I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian and I do take eggs. However, for those who do not eat eggs, the other word to learn is "khai". Quite a number of times, I was asked if I want egg after they understood I "kin jae" (i.e. eat vegetarian).
Noodles stall
Noodles stall are found every where in Thailand, but there are very few vegetarian ones. We were eating noodles for breakfast almost every day. However, the ingredients are mostly meat and the stock is definitely meat stock. To avoid the meat stock, you will have to ask for dry noodles (instead of noodles in soup). The word is "haeng". So I normally, point to the type of noodles I want and tell the cook "haeng". If they understood the jae part correctly, what comes out would be a bowl of noodles with a few leaves of morning glory (i.e. what we know as kang kong in Singapore) and a few bean spouts. It's normally quite bland because they do not put any sauces in them (Thailand mostly use fish sauce instead of soy sauce). Once I managed to get tofu on top of vegetables and bean sprout. Another time, I got carrots in my noodles.
 Plain kway teow, served with vegetables and bean sprouts only. I sprinkled some chilli powder for some flavouring. The texture of the kway teow is quite good. |
 Dry yellow noodles with tofu. I saw the fried tofu and pointed at it and managed to get it into my bowl of noodles. The yellow noodles looked like egg noodles. However, Duen at May Kaidee's vegetarian restaurant told me that normally, the stalls would not use egg noodles because they are more expensive. It is just plain wheat noodles (yellow color is from coloring not from egg). |
Stir fry stalls
For lunch, I ended up eating fried rice (khao phat) or fried riced noodles (phat Thai) most of the time.
While travelling through towns and villages, the easiest way to get meatless food is to look for a stir fry stall. Next to the noodles stalls, these are most common. These are the stalls that will cook your noodles or rice on the spot when you order them.
You can order vegetables dishes, but unless you can speak Thai, it's difficult to ensure what turn out does not contain meat. So I stick with the two safe bets -- khao phat jae (for vegetarian fried rice) or phat Thai jae. They should be able to get it right -- once you ask for variations, chances are they won't turn out right. My friend who always wanted something different from the menu almost always got something wasn't quite he intended. However, do note that chives is almost always found in phat thai. Egg is frequently used is both fried rice and phat thai. Some cooks will ask if you want egg, some won't ask. If you don't want egg, say "mai khai". Some phat thai looks meatless -- but they may have tiny dried shrimps. So always tell them "phat thai jae".
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The traditional vegetarian stalls in Thailand normally will put up a yellow banner with the word jae in red along with the Chinese word for jae (齋). If you see this banner, you can be assured it is "pure" vegetarian (with vegetarian sauces used as well). This jae word is also found on vegetarian sauces.
The picture here is taken in Chiang Mai, at the market at the southern gate of the old city. I had a bowl of hot soup noodles here. Yes, in spite of what it looked like, this bowl of soup noodles is vegetarian: the red color "BBQ pork" is made from gluten, while the stick of meat balls is made from TVP.
My special woon sen
This was my attempt to get something off the menu. We were at a food stall in a market in Chiang Mai old city. The food stall has a menu with description in English. However, I was tired of fried rice and phat thai. I saw that the menu had woon sen (bean vermicelli aka glass noodle) but cooked with meat. That was something I wanted. So I made an attempt to tell the cook I wanted woon sen jae.After she served up all my friends' orders, I noticed she appeared confused. She knew I wanted woon sen she took it out of the fridge and showed it to me. So I went over and pointed to the vegetables and the woon sen. I pointed to the woon sen, pointed to the vegetables, told her "mai gai mai moo" (no chicken no pork), and repeated "jae" a few times, she finally got it. What impressed me was that she actually opened up a new bottle of soy sauce for this dish!
This turned out to be a very delicious dish! And it's only 40B (less than S$2).
Dinner at Lopburi
The ruins in Lopburi are scattered all over the old city. You get to eat practically by the ruins when if you eat at the food stalls that are found by the railway line.
Here, we ate at one of the road side stalls with lots of vegetables. This is an example of what you order is not what you get.
Sheung and I tried to order 3 vegetables dishes (among other meat dishes which the rest of the guys wanted). What turned out was just 1 dish with all the vegetables which we wanted thrown in! But it was delicious anyway!
Chilli basil vegetables
In Bangkok, the stalls more likely to have dealt with tourist and hence more likely to get it right. Here I was at a roadside stall at Wat Chanasongkran (very close to Khao San road). I tried to order something off the menu again. I asked for a chilli basil stir fry vegetables (Chilli basil chicken/pork was on the menu). They got it right. What came out was a very delicious dish of mix vegetables that is slightly spicy, with the fragrance of basil.Vegetarian snacks from the markets
Most of the snacks in the night markets or street markets are not vegetarian. But there are some nice vegetarian ones as well.
This is steamed oyster mushroom and white fungus. It's served as a vegetarian salad. Very nice but the dressing is burning spicy hot (yes, even for someone who has a high tolerance for spiciness like myself).
Corn fritters, vegetable tempura and chives pan cake (the little bit on the right side of the picture). The corn fritter was nice. The vegetable tempura was bad because it was oil soaked -- a result of being deep fried in low temperature. The chive pan cakes were delicious.
Sweet potatoes and tapioca. It's sweet, more of a desert than a snack.
I mostly avoided buns because I suspected the stuffing is most likely meat. My friend Sheung told the hawker, kin jae, and the hawker pointed to the green color buns (what we call mun tou in Chinese) and another bun. The mun tou shaped is exactly like the Chinese mun tou -- plain dough, no stuffing but slight sweet. The other bun had red bean paste as stuffing (i.e. tau sar bau in Singapore) but the bean paste is not as smooth as those we get in Singapore.
Restaurants
In big cities like Bangkok and Chiang Mai, vegetarian food is relatively easy to get. There are vegetarian restaurants targeting the tourists. The cafes and restaurants in guesthouse always have something vegetarian. Even if they do not, they will speak enough English to whip up something you requested.
In Chiang Mai, there a few vegetarian restaurants that target mostly the tourist market, such as May Kaidee and Aum restaurant. There are the traditional Thai restaurants which display the
yellow jae flag as well but they mostly close after lunch.I had a buffet dinner at May Kaidee for 80B (only S$3.5!). The spread included fried noodles, fried kway teow, fried spring rolls, fried yam and sweet potatoes, pumpkin soup, fresh salad rolls, salad, tofu stir fry, vegetable stir fry, masamam curry and brown rice. It was a sumptuous meal.
In Bangkok
The food court on the 7th floor of MBK had a vegetarian stall. It's like the economy rice stalls in Singapore. You pick the cooked dishes to be served with rice. 2 dishes with rice came up to be 45B. The dishes are more like home cooked food, but I found them to be quite tasty.
We had our most sumptuous meal for the whole trip in the Central Mall next to the Sala Deng MRT station. Someone recommended the Banana Leaf restaurant at the basement. It's not a vegetarian restaurant, but they do have a vegetarian menu.
The vegetarian Tom Yum soup was heavenly (it's a clear soup, not like the redish soup we get in Singapore, and very spicy very sour). The chilli basil straw mushrooms were great too. The bill was about 2000B for 6, but that's because the others ordered many dishes like chilli crab, a big fish and pig trotters. They are meat eaters. I guess if I weren't around, the vegetarian dishes ordered for me would be meat dishes as well.
Overall, it ain't too difficult getting meatless food in Thailand while backpacking. You need a smattering of Thai, some gesturing and a bit of adventure. However, it's difficult to avoid fish sauces and oyster sauce unless you are at a vegetarian restaurant.
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