The Phuket Vegetarian Festival began yesterday, which kicks off at the new moon of the ninth lunar month and spans nine days. Legend is that this event began when some Chinese Hokkien descendants fell ill in Phuket during a cholera epidemic in 1825 and, not knowing the cause of their illnesses, engaged in some intense cleansing rituals to appease God. They were cured of their afflictions and the rituals caught on.
Although the festival is best known for its fire walkers and those hosting all manner of strange face and body piercings many including myself engage in it as a vegetarian cleanse. Adherents are supposed to wear all white in the temples, not eat any meat or consume any alcohol and refrain from sexual activity during the cleanse. I cheat quite a bit but I still enjoy the festivities and the excellent vegan cuisine. Yesterday we went to Wat Nai Yang to see the festivities.
These yellow flags are used to denote areas of worship during the nine day event.
Any restaurant with the yellow flags and triangles is serving vegetarian/vegan food during the event. I do not know of any which include either eggs or milk products, so it would be vegan. The traditional recipes are very delicious and in many cases indistinguishable from meat based choices. My favorites are the spring rolls and certain vegetarian curries.
We made an offering at Wat Nai Yang. I came back later and noticed that both candles were still burning down, though one did have to be realit from the other.
Getting our new fortune at the temple.
Unfortunately dietary trends have become highly politicized and spill over into personal dietary choices which I do not think should be judged. At one point vegetarianism was all of the rage, with many people concerned about animal welfare and the ravages of factory farming. Then somehow veganism got tied into a backlash over eating cricket burgers (how are those vegan?) and the holier than thou attitude of certain influencers in the movement. So now vegans are categorized as always being some type of blue haired feminist far left quintuple jabbed Covidiot, and none of us want ot be those things, now do we? Suddenly the all meat diet is all of the rage!
Some days ago I was was watching one of these all meat all of the time videos which was making out like eating vegetables was a vast conspiracy to make people impotent and sick. My mind immediately sprang to tennis player Novak Djovich. I admire him for his principled stance in refusing the Covid jabs of course, even to the point of missing career milestones such as the Australian Open. His recent Olympic gold medal cements him as the GOAT, the Greatest Player of All Time, in tennis.
So what does the GOAT eat in a day? It is insane in retrospect that somebody who is so principled and meticulous about what goes into his body through his diet was being required to inject an unknown substance in order to play tennis. Djovich is extremely low key about his diet as he does not want it to be a political issue. In going through his testing and his discovery of his gluten and sugar intolerance, I could not help but think that Sasha Latypova is absolutely correct regarding vaccines being a vector for creating low grade allergic reactions to things we eat. Yes, far more pesticides are sprayed on our food, just as they are poisoning the air and water. But all of those jabs are producing the biggest payoff in the form of harming our health.
For those who don’t know, Novak Djovich is vegan. Always go with your n of 1 regarding what goes into your body and forget the trends.
That brings me to the CAMP RAT study, an observational cohort regarding the diet of woodland rats nearby a campsite as observed in Phuket, Thailand, during July to October of 2024. Seriously the rats are always getting into our food supplies. They’ve chewed through cardboard and styrofoam boxes and climbed up trees and walls to get to things we’ve tried to keep out of their reach. The National Park doesn’t technically allow pets even though a few good mousing cats would be extremely valuable to us. A Russian man who was staying in the camp tried to adopt an adorable little black kitten he named Prince, but unfortunately the park staff told him no and the kitten was taken out to stay with a family nearby.
The Camp rats eat some obvious things like rice either dried or cooked and they’ve nipped through the plastic on more than a few bags of Raman and bread. They love fried chicken brought from the market along with cheese (unsurprising there). They have bitten through several tomatos and cucumbers but have thus far not disturbed eggplant, limes, garlic cloves, onions or hot peppers. They also have not bothered with alcohol (even sweetened drinks), tobacco, marijuana, coffee or kratom leaves.
One surprising thing they eat, however, is soap. This is even odder because toiletries are kept in a seperate location from food items. The first time I found a half eaten bar of soap I didn’t even know what I was looking at. I just thought my husband had maybe tried to clean a serrated knife or something. Then it happened a few more times and I noticed bite marks on the bag of toiletries too. Yes, the rats eat bars of soap of at least three different varieties.
Another odd thing that these obviously very clean, church going, alcohol tobacco and marijuana abstaining rats seem to eat is plastic. I found a long discarded empty bottle of cooking oil behind something which was almost entirely eaten. They chew through water bottles all of the time and have nipped at plastic containers for fish sauce, seasoning and vinegar enough times that I now buy those items in glass bottles.
The point of this is that although microplastics, pesticides and other poisonings are probably affecting us and those in the animal kingdom, the CAMP RATS seem to be procreating and flourishing enough to make food storage a hassle. I’m pretty sure the rodents haven’t been vaccinated for a darned thing, however.
I consider my CAMP RATS Study to be much more useful and far less cruel than say, drilling as hole into the rats skulls and injecting rabid dog saliva, say. What possible useful results did these mad scientists get from their animal studies? It was probably some useful information about the best ways to really poison people.
I wish you all good health no matter what you are eating. My advice is to savor the food, whatever it is…