Good News for Pigs, Bangkok 2009

This is part of our second 2009 Burmese Odyssey. To read more about it which includes many non-steam items, please see Rob and Yuehong in the Golden Land 2009, Part 2.

The Chinese are notorious for eating anything with legs - honourable exceptions being tables and chairs. Frankly, I know from painful personal experience that the average Asian body does not respond too kindly to a Western diet, especially if it involves trips to MacDonalds and KFC - the sort of places I avoid like the plague. So the advent of Bangkok's annual vegetarian week, after the Mooncake festival and from the 25th day of the 9th month,  is to be much applauded even if it brings me personal pain as I am in good shape for a gentleman of mature years and I know a prolonged meat free diet would see me wither away to nothing... 

Of course, if you are Chinese the concept of a free dinner is completely alien. You make your offerings and then dress up a young lady as Guan Yin who is guaranteed to ensure that you (if female) or your wife (if male) gets pregnant - naturally with a boy. Not to mention a few other things too... In Penang (and no doubt elsewhere she is often referred to as the Goddess of Mercy.)

And just in case you chant a few prayers or even better pay a few mature ladies to do it for you:

Someone once said that half the females at any temple were praying to get pregnant and the other half were praying not to. I could not possibly comment except to say that it sounds perfectly plausible to me. This was (believe it or not) the scene outside the main Chinatown hospital:

On the street, business was extremely brisk, vegetarian food being offered at such prices that everyone was making a pig of themselves:

And so it continued night and day, I confess I am an omnivore, most of it left me cold but I did enjoy the special durian cakes:

Bangkok food can be excellent, but nothing quite compares with what is available in Penang...