Bangkok Week 14 — Mika's Photos

This week marked the start of the annual 10-day Vegetarian Festival, celebrated throughout the country. Street vendors and grocery stores temporarily swap their normally-carnivorous wares for vegetarian-friendly edibles. (Although this particular vegetarianism excludes dairy and eggs, too.) Eat up!

Weekend breakfasts at home seem to be routine, now. Here, we butcher a papaya.

No one to stop us from playing with food now!

Enjoying the Thai-style raisin bread and pomelo that accompanied the papaya.

If you haven't read the album description yet, now's the time to do so! (Return to the main album page and look on the RH side.) This is the entrance to our (normally vegetarian) food court.

The yellow flags indicate vegetarian food for the festival. Of course, the fare is vegetarian year-round, here.

Even the sky train is advertising about the big vegetarian meal it will be hosting this weekend.

Downtown on a Sunny Sun-- oh wait, it was a Saturday.

Part of a new exhibit at the new Arts' Center. Well, 2/3 are part of the new exhibit.

More picturesque downtown scenery.

Climbing the stairs back up to the walkway above Siam Square.

This view should be familiar by now.

A bunch of photographers convene with their fancy cameras.

Stopping for a DQ break and some shade on the way to buy bus tickets.

Enjoying ice cream in the shade of billboards. How Bangkok.

Some models were (less-than-enthusiastically) posing for this photographer.

Would you like a Citibank Credit Card? We would.

Traditional desserts... think cupcake-cross-angel food cake.

A "Free!!" solar-powered cellphone charger. It's not clear whether it worked, though.

new jersey: big hair, bigger hearts... biggest confusion!

In celebration of the vegetarian festival (see the sign?) they were handing out stir-fry samples at Tesco, complete with disposable Asian-style spoon.

These "meatball bars" usually contain meat. Not this week! Oh no, this is 100% soy protein, my friend! Yum yum!

These, too! Curry pastes with no fish or shrimp!

The Ice Cream store even served a "vegetarian" sundae, complete with dairy-free ice cream and -- you guessed it -- corn kernels sprinkled on top!

We opted for a more traditional, dairy-full sundae instead.

"Mmm, cough syrup."

Enjoying a dinner of unprecedented variety, after shopping our tummies out at Tesco.

Two nights later, another unusually large dinner courtesy of different vendors across the street (that are usually meat-only).

How exciting!

And the following night, even more novel dishes from the unconventional sellers.

How spoiled we are. Now, we just have to wait another 51 weeks.