En-Thai-cing Fun For Less

This weekend was the first Thai Festival in Brighton, and as my partner lives barely a 5 minute walk from Preston Park we figured we'd check it out. Dan is a huge fan of all things Thai, having spent the majority of the time he was travelling in Asia in Thailand and spending a month alone in the city of Bangkok, and I can't even describe how excited he was to be going to a Thai festival. The human embodiment of all of these excitable dog .gifs:




I almost had to stop him from skipping down the road on the way there.

It was obviously signposted and really easy to see, too - the bouncy castles and bright orange tents were hard to miss - and the ticket offices at the entrance were smoothly run. We bought a LivingSocial offer that got one of us in for free, so we spent £3 on entry for both of us, on both days; for a first festival, we weren't expecting much, but we had so much fun.

The first thing that hit us as we walked through the entrance was the aroma from the food tents - they were situated right next to the entrance and the food smelled divine, almost calling us over to have a nose (pun totally intended).

Each stall had food from different regions of Thailand with many dietary options - although many were pork or chicken, or laden with fish sauce as a flavouring ingredient, I found a fair few stalls with vegetarian offerings.

    I picked up some vegetable stir fry noodles for £4.50 as I wanted something hot (although I could have had Som Tam Thai - papaya salad - or sweetcorn cakes), and loaded up on the sweet chilli sauce for an extra little kick of flavour, and it was so good I would have gone back for more had I not been full. It was cheap, it was delicious, and at an estimated 400-500kcal it was definitely a diet-friendly meal.

Dan had a Pork Panang Curry which is a traditional Thai dish made with coconut milk, and a Singha beer for £8. He loved it, as it was a dish he'd enjoyed in Thailand and insisted that it felt and tasted really authentic, especially as he was ordering from a market stall and it had been cooked outside. Singha beer is produced in Thailand's first and largest brewery, and they sponsored the Brighton Thai Festival.

After lunch we headed over to the main stage to see some of the scheduled performances - the descriptions we'd read of the festival promised traditional Thai music and dancing, as well as boxing demonstrations and performances by Thai Lady Boys, so we settled down on one of the many hay bales surrounding the stage to catch two of the lady boys performing to Beyoncé and Moulin Rouge.

 I just want to take a moment to point out one of the performer's shoes, too - honestly, I could not even stand in them, so kudos to her for throwing herself into performing in them! They were gorgeous, I had such shoe envy.

Thailand is a lot more accepting of Kathoeys, or Lady Boys, than other Asian countries, considering them to be a 'third gender' - although they do still face legal and social impediments. I love Lady Boys: to me, they take all the things I identify with femininity, such as makeup and high heels, and expand on it. Heels are taller, makeup is bolder, and they embrace the glitz and glamour associated with being female with confidence, and the performance at the Brighton Thai Festival was a fun, family-friendly way of introducing an important element of Thai culture.

We also checked out some of the product stalls to see what was on offer, and some of it was your typical festival tat, but others were intricately designed items such as carved soaps - which is actually a handicraft that has been developing for years in Thailand.

  The buffalo horn carvings aren't exactly my thing but I can appreciate the hard work put into each hand-carved horn.

We spent a good 3 to 4 hours at the festival over the weekend, and we had so much fun: the food was tasty and authentic; the entertainment was enjoyable and a real fusion of modern (in the Lady Boy performances and Thai boxing demonstrations) and traditional (we caught the tail end of a Thai flute performance and I'm gutted we didn't catch the performance in full); and it was generally rather good value for money. We spent a total of £15.50 between the two of us on entrance and food, and there was a variety of vegetarian options for me which can be a big issue at other festivals.
 ขอขอบคุณ Brighton!