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The best vegetarian guide for Chiang Mai is made by Ath (Phongsathon Kitchawet), who is a webdesigner, artist, photographer, writer and idealist. I met him today and had a talk with him about the website and most important- Chiang Mai as a vegetarian city.

When Ath moved to Chiang Mai in 2000, he found the Vegetarian Restaurant Guide to Chiang Mai, Thailand map by David Freyer (15 March 2000). This map showed 39 vegetarian restaurants and 8 veggie-friendly restaurants, giving a total of 47 restaurants.

Chiang Mai Municipal city’s area is 40.216 square kilometer, so in 2000 the average was almost one restaurant per square kilometer…true heaven for vegetarians like myself.

Chiang Mai definitely has the most vegetarian restaurants in Thailand.

Surveying in September 2007 by Ath, there were more than 28 vegetarian restaurants in Chiang Mai City Municipality area. Less than 2000 because of closure or change from vegetarian to vegetarian-friendly (also meat) restaurant.

However, the Chiang Mai vegetarian scene is still vibrant, with more than 18 new vegetarian restaurants opening since 2000 (half the restaurants currently open) and the average is 1 restaurant per 1.43 km2, which is still high.

Chiang Mai’s broad cultural mix also plays a large role with Thai, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Muslim and western influences evident in Chiang Mai’s vegetarian restaurants.

Local culture seems to be less of an influence with some notable exceptions. The famous Northern Thai monk Khruba Sriwichai became a vegetarian in 1903. However this seems to have had only a limited effect on local people.

The main reason of opening a vegetarian restaurant is:

1. Religion

1.1 Buddhism
1.1.1 Theravada school Santi Asoke is the leader.
1.1.2 Mahayana school
1.1.2.1 From China, which is the origin of Chinese vegetarian festival.
1.1.2.2 From Taiwan, I-Kuan Tao (or Tian Tao or Anutaratham in Thai) movement opened many vegetarian restaurants in Chiang Mai.
1.2 Other religions
1.2.1 Sikh (Indian Restaurant but now closed)
1.2.2 Christianity (Korean Food, vegetarian-friendly)

And also Dev Mandir, Hindu temple. It is not a restaurant but it gives away free Indian and Thai vegetarian food every Tuesday, 8.30 – 9.30 pm. It’s delicious and I recommend you to try it.

2. Health
Influenced by Cheewajit (applied macrobiotic) 1998 – 2002.

Even though there are more vegetarian restaurants in Chiang Mai than other Thai cities there is still only 1 vegetarian restaurant for every 5,356 people in the municipal area (population of 149,959, March 2006).When you consider the social, ethical and environmental factors, this is still very few.

Besides all of this very interesting information that Ath could give me, the website also has Thai language learning (with audio), a great map of vegetarian restaurants, and sight seeing information for Chiang Mai etc.

To visit the website - go to: http://www.geocities.com/chiangmaivegetarian/indexeng.htm

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Donating your hair for charity is not only supporting a great cause, it is also a way to make sure that nothing is wasted in life and that in every act you do you are mindful. I donated 30 cm (14 inches) of my hair to charity today -for children’s wigs and in the video below you can see the event and get instruction how to donate.

One of the charities you can donate your hair to is “Locks of Love”. It is a well-established nonprofit organization dedicated to gathering donated hair for children’s wigs. The charity makes wigs for financially disadvantaged children across the U.S. who suffer from long-term medical hair loss. These children receive custom-made and fitted wigs made from donated human hair for free or on a sliding scale based on need.

Donated hair must be at least 10 inches long, clean, dry, and bundled into a ponytail or braid. Colored or permed hair is acceptable if it’s not chemically damaged. Most of the wig requests come from girls, and they want long hair. That’s why there is a minimum length. Hair as long as 14 to 16 inches is ideal. Short-haired boy’s wigs are made from shorter lengths separated from longer ponytails/braids.

“Wigs for Kids” is another nonprofit group that accepts donated hair. This organization also gives wigs to children affected by medical hair loss. Their hair donation guidelines are slightly different: hair must be 12 inches long and must not be permed or color-treated in any way.

While chemotherapy is the best-known reason for children’s hair loss, it does not cause a permanent loss of hair. After the treatment is over, hair almost always grows back within three to six months. In contrast, alopecia areata, an autoimmune skin disease, can cause patchy or complete hair loss that lasts for years. The cause of the disease is unknown, and it currently has no cure.

According to “Locks of Love” most of the children they help have alopecia areata, and the wigs are a great boost to the children’s self esteem.

Whether you have hair or money to donate, those in need will appreciate your hair and your generosity.

You can send your donated hair to:
LOCKS OF LOVE
2925 10th Avenue N
Suite 102
Lake Worth, FL 33461-3099

- My haircut was done by Khun Noi at “Your Hair” in Chiang Mai. It is located on 106/4 Sirimangkalajarn Rd, Chiang Mai 50200. Phone: +66 (0)89-5599586

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If there is something all health experts can agree upon – it is that animal fat is NOT healthy. In fact the best thing you can do for your health is to become a vegetarian. A healthy vegetarian diet also protects you against numerous diseases, including: heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

The American Dietetic Association have declared that vegetarians have “lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; … lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer” and that vegetarians are less likely than meat-eaters to be overweight. This of course doesn’t mean that you are necessarily skinny just because you are a vegetarian – but you are definitely healthier. Research has shown that vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease, and they have 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters. Meat-eaters are furthermore nine times more likely to be overweight than vegans are.

The consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products has also been strongly linked to osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, asthma, and male impotence. Scientists have also found that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than their meat-eaters and this means that they are less prone to everyday sicknesses like the flu. Vegetarians and vegans live, on average, six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters. Some may infer that it is not worth living longer if you can eat what you want – but there are more reasons than “merely” health to be a vegetarian (read: Global hunger: The more meat we eat, the fewer people we can feed)

A good vegetarian diet is perfectly sufficient for you to get all the nutrients you need, and without all the saturated fat, cholesterol, and contaminants found in animal products.

Highly recommended: On PETA’s website you can request a great, free vegetarian starter kit and they even send it for free (amazing!!!). I ordered one online for both of my sisters and my mum and they were delivered free of charge to their house: http://goveg.com/order.asp

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There is more than enough food in the world to feed the entire human population. So why are more than 840 million people still going hungry?

The truth: The more meat we eat, the fewer people we can feed. If everyone on Earth received 25 percent of his or her calories from animal products, only 3.2 billion people would have food to eat. Dropping that figure to 15 percent would mean that 4.2 billion people could be fed. If the whole world became vegan, there would be plenty food to feed all of us—more than 6.3 billion people. The World Watch Institute sums this up rightly, saying, “Meat consumption is an inefficient use of grain—the grain is used more efficiently when consumed by humans. Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat-eaters and the world’s poor.”

It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of edible animal flesh. According to the USDA and the United Nations, using an acre of land to raise cattle for slaughter yields 20 pounds of usable protein. That same acre would yield 356 pounds of protein if soybeans were grown instead—more than 17 times as much!

Producing the grain that is used to feed farmed animals requires vast amounts of water. It takes about 300 gallons of water per day to produce food for a vegan, and more than 4,000 gallons of water per day to produce food for a meat-eater. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year.

It should be no surprise, then, that food for a vegan can be produced on only 1/6 of an acre of land, while it takes 3 1/4 acres of land to produce food for a meat-eater. If we added up all the arable land on the planet and divided it equally, every human would get 2/3 of an acre—more than enough to sustain a vegetarian diet, but not nearly enough to sustain a meat-eater.

On top of this the industrial world is exporting grain to developing countries and importing the meat that is produced with it, and thus farmers who are trying to feed themselves are being driven off their land. Their efficient, plant-based agricultural model is being replaced with intensive livestock rearing, which also pollutes the air and water and renders the once-fertile land dead and barren.

If this trend continues, the developing world will never be able to produce enough food to feed itself, and global hunger will continue to plague hundreds of millions of people around the globe. There is only one solution to world hunger - A vegan diet is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world’s most urgent social justice issue.

So the less meat you eat – the more people we can feed! Think about it.

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People often ask me why I am a vegetarian and for how long I have been a vegetarian. I decided to write a series of articles about vegetarianism because it is close to my heart and there are lots of things to be said about it. In this first article I briefly outline my personal reasons for being a vegetarian.

The simple answer is that I love animals and since the age of 16 I have refused to eat them. To me the notion of loving someone and killing them does not go together. And to me all animals are worthy of life and it makes no difference whether people eat a cow or a cat - you kill to eat and it is equally bad.

Now I am not a fanatic vegetarian in the sense that I don’t object to other people eating whatever they want, but I do oppose people categorizing themselves as something they are not – like the notion that people who don’t eat meat but do eat fish are “vegetarians”. To me this categorization is wrong because a fish is NOT a vegetable.

According to the official definition of vegetarianism from Wikipedia “it is the practice of a diet that excludes all animal flesh, including poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crustacean, and slaughter by-products”. A vegan is a person who excludes all animal products from diet and in some definitions from attire also, whether or not the production of clothing or items has involved the actual death of an animal (dairy, eggs, honey, wool, silk, down feathers, etc.). I am a vegetarian but I don’t buy leather or feather pillows or covers. This is against my conviction (which is personal and not religious).

My main reason thus is ethical - an aversion to inflicting pain or harm on other living creatures, or a belief that the unnecessary killing of other animals is inherently wrong.

Environmental reasons also count high on my list – namely the fact that so many people are starving and the production of meat for consumption as oppose to grains is unsustainable. Did you know that the inefficiencies of meat, milk and egg production range from 4:1 energy input to protein output ratio up to 54:1 and as such the U.S. could feed 800 million people with the grain that the livestock eat.

Another argument is that farmed animals produce about 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the United States. Since factory farms don’t have sewage treatment systems as cities and towns do, this ends up polluting ground water, destroying the topsoil, and contaminating the air. Hence as a meat-eater you should consider yourself partly responsible for the production of all of this waste — about 86,000 pounds per second.

There are an endless list of motivations and benefits of being a vegetarian including: religious and spiritual, health reasons, medical, ethical, environmental, economical, psychological, and cultural. In my next blog posts I will write on the topic in greater detail.

So as you can see there are plenty of reasons to stop eating meat – in fact you can improve the world by stopping today

Good luck.

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