If you live in the Tampa Bay area, you don’t have to drive very far any Sunday afternoon to find yourself in a different culture, almost a different country. At a local Buddhist monastery (yes, this is Tampa!), you can enjoy very cheaply the architecture, food, and friendliness of Thailand, in a charming riverside setting. Although it is a Buddhist setting, you will find many people who head there after church services.
See a slide show of the Tampa Thai food festival here.
But, I’m not a Buddhist…
Just as you don’t have to be a Catholic to play bingo in the parish hall, which is a fund-raiser, neither do you have to be a Buddhist to visit and enjoy the weekly Thai food festival, another fund-raiser. No one is going to try to convert you. You are welcome to visit the temple, if you wish. Enter the temple as you would a church, with one exception: you are asked to remove your shoes. That is not meant to show respect to the Buddha or to Buddhism. It is simply a way of showing respect to the culture of your hosts.
The weekly Thai food festival
For years now – no one seems to know how many – the people, mainly Thai, of Wat Tampa (that’s easier to say than the full name, Wat Mongkolratanaram) have come together every Sunday to prepare and serve amazing food at amazing prices as a fund-raiser for the wat or temple, located at 5306 Palm River Rd., Tampa (across the street from a Baptist church). You can find the Google map and directions here.
The Thai families start serving about 10:30 (again, no one has ever given me a specific time), and they close up, oh… about 1:00, when the service starts in the temple… or when all the food has been eaten. This is a very relaxed, laid back place.
Food is served on a huge covered porch. After paying for your food at different stalls, you find a picnic table and eat outside, so dress accordingly. In case of rain, there is enough covered space for you to eat without getting wet. It can be fun to share your table (they do get crowded) and swap stories with people about how they found this Thai food festival. People-watching is part of the fun.
Tampa’s Thai food festival is a family-friendly festival. In keeping with Buddhist teachings, alcoholic beverages are not allowed. A variety of sodas and other drinks, such as bottled water and a concoction called Thai iced tea (that I have never tried) are available at a dollar each.
Food items range in price from three to five dollars each. I usually go with three friends, and we first buy a bag of fried vegetables (taro, banana, and yam) to nibble on as we decide what our main courses will be. You can get a plate (actually, a Styrofoam box) of rice and one or two curries, or you can try a hearty salad. People seem glad to explain the ingredients of different dishes, and you won’t have much trouble getting samples.
My favorite is the soup. As you go through the soup line, you select what you want: pork or beef, fish balls, thick or thin noodles. These are stirred into a hearty broth with some vegetables. The soup is probably the least spicy food you can find here, but there is a table of condiments, which can raise the heat frighteningly.
There are also Thai egg rolls, sometimes fried fish, and tables of desserts that I’ve never paid much attention to.
Do you have children, dogs, or a boat?
Children are welcome, and if your children will not eat Thai food, you can bring food for them. Although the temple grounds are on the banks of the Palm River, swimming and fishing are not allowed, and there is no lifeguard. Sometimes, people come on boats to the temple, and they can tie up the boats at the dock. Dogs on leashes are welcome.
Are you a vegetarian?
Buddhists are not necessarily vegetarian. The Buddha himself was not, and neither are the monks here. Most Thai Buddhists are not. If you are a vegetarian, you can probably put together a meal, but it will require the same effort and thought that you are perhaps accustomed to in a mainstream restaurant.
Do you use a wheel-chair?
The parking lot is not paved, but all the facilities have wheel-chair accessible ramps, except for the temple, which has a wheel-chair lift at the back left corner.
The weekly market and other activities
At one corner of the property, there is a tent, where you can buy plants and assorted vegetables and fruits. Sometimes, you can also purchase some Buddhist items; usually, there are some books that you can purchase in the temple. Check the website (here) for special activities, many involving Buddhist or Thai national holidays.
If you ever find yourself in Tampa, Florida, on a Sunday afternoon with nothing to do, hop in the car (I do not think public transportation is available for the temple), and head out to Tampa’s weekly Thai food festival. You can get some great food at reasonable prices, and you can have the sense, sitting on the banks of the Palm River, of being very far away, sitting on the banks of a river that you do not even know the name of… surprisingly close to an exit off the Crosstown Expressway.
If you are a home-schooler, or if you would just like to enhance your experience, you can learn more about the Theravada Buddhism of this community in my article (here), or you can check out the index of all my articles on Buddhism (here).
Monks and Drunks
After pigging out on spicy Thai food on the banks of the Palm River, my friends and I like to travel to Riverview to the Beer Shed, where, it seems, more people arrive by boat than by car, to sit on the banks of the Alafia River and quench the Thai fire with a cold beer or two or… You can get directions from Wat Tampa to the Beer Shed here.
