Veggie Blog

If you are planning a trip to Thailand, do not worry about finding vegetarian food to eat. Thailand has a lot of vegan and vegetarian food, and this is a short guide to how to find it.

How easy is it to find vegetarian food in Thailand?

The old version of this post said that Bangkok has about 175 vegetarian restaurants and 72 vegan ones. I cannot verify those counts, but the point stands: dedicated vegetarian and vegan places are easy to find in the big cities. One well-known example is May Kaidee, which began as a street cart in Bangkok in 1988 and now serves fully vegan Thai food. Outside the cities, ordinary Thai restaurants will often cook a dish without meat if you ask clearly.

What is jay food?

Look for yellow flags with a red Thai character, เจ, which is pronounced “jay.” According to Wikipedia, the flag shows that a stall or restaurant serves food that observant participants of the Vegetarian Festival can eat. It is stricter than ordinary vegetarian food: no meat, poultry, seafood or dairy, no fish sauce or eggs, and often no garlic or strong spices. The festival is held in Phuket and other places for nine days every year, and the Tourism Authority of Thailand lists it for 10 to 18 October in 2026. It comes from the Hokkien Chinese tradition of Phuket and follows the Chinese lunar calendar, so the dates change from year to year.

Are there different kinds of vegans in Thailand?

The old post said there are two groups: people who are 100 percent vegan, and people who eat animals but avoid big ones such as cows. I could not find research that confirms this, so treat it as one writer’s observation. What I can say is that you should not assume a dish is meat-free just because it looks like vegetables.

How should you order?

Say you want to eat vegetarian or vegan food, and ask whether the dish contains fish sauce, shrimp paste, oyster sauce or egg, because they are common in ordinary Thai cooking. If you want to cook the dishes yourself afterwards, our post on Real Vegetarian Thai by Nancie McDermott is a good place to begin.