From CNN

 

 

(CNN) — Thailand is a country blessed by an abundance of fruits and vegetables. Navigate a local market and you'll find a diverse selection of fresh produce in massive quantities.

 

Sounds like a dream destination for vegetarians, right?

 

Not so fast. Once you sit down and browse a Thai restaurant menu, you'll soon realize that pork is an obsession in Thailand and fish sauce is a main flavoring ingredient in many dishes.

 

But don't worry, one of the great things about Thailand is that in most restaurants your food isn't cooked until you order it. This means that you can specify exactly what you want to exclude from your dish before it is prepared.

 

I wrote the Vegetarian Thai Food Guide to show travelers who don't eat meat exactly how to take advantage of the famous tongue-pleasing flavors of Thai cuisine. Here are a few tips from it.

To stick to your vegetarian or vegan diet in Thailand, it's helpful to understand the Thai view of vegetarianism.

 

"Vegetarian" loosely translates to "mang sa wirat" (มังสวิรัติ), a word that specifies you don't eat noticeable pieces of meat or seafood.

 

Everything else -- including eggs, meat stock, fish sauce or other animal products -- is fair game. Just not chunks of meat.

 

Vegan translates similarly to the Thai word "jay" (เจ), referring to a person who eats no meat, no seafood, no animal byproducts, no garlic, and even excludes a few herbs and vegetables that have too pungent of a flavor.

 

The first thing you'll need to do is tell the cook or waiter that you are vegetarian: "ben mang sa wirat" (เป็นมังสวิรัต). To play it completely safe, you can say "gin jay" กินเจ).

 

When you order your dish, emphasize again that you are vegetarian and make sure to mention that you want your food without any form of meat ("mai gin neua sat" ไม่กินเนื้อสัตว์).

 

After that you can give further personal requests like no fish sauce ("mai ow nam bplaa" ไม่เอานำ้ปลา) or no oyster sauce ("mai ow nam man hoy" ไม่เอาน้ำมันหอย).

 

To get you started, here are five popular Thai dishes and tips on how to order completely vegetarian versions of them.

 

Continues at

http://www.cnn.com/travel/article/thai-food-vegetarians-guide/index.html

Hei reader, can you please include the GPS location of the restaurants you eat.

great guide! thanks for sharing these tips