As festival season dies down in the West, it's only just beginning to take off here in Thailand. Music, arts and food events will be settling in on every breezy and open area in the country, and Wonderfruit, the most ambitious and inimitable of all the festivals in Thailand (and Southeast Asia), is returning for its third consecutive year.
Taking place from Dec 15-18 at Siam Country Club, Pattaya, this year, Wonderfruit is the brainchild of business tycoon Pranitan "Pete" Phornprapha and music producer Montonn "Jay" Jira. It is a four-day ecologically-concious camping festival based on its six pillars of art, music, family, wellness and adventures, talks and workshops and food.
Promoted as an eco-friendly "blend of barefoot luxury with awe-inspiring architecture and natural adventures", Wonderfruit is an uncategorisable celebration of life, and this year, Pete seems to be even more focused on its green cause. You would never really know though, whether a festival is "green" unless you're told so. It almost seems like a gimmick at this point, since most festivals these days are mostly cash-grabs by organisers and sponsors.
It's an even harder concept to grasp, especially at Wonderfruit, with their decadent stages, gourmet dining, off-site boutique tents and hordes of festivalgoers that seem to care more about photo-ops and having an amazing time. It's easy to doubt whether this festival is as truly "sustainable" and "eco-friendly" with all this going on, but Pete is taking major steps in order for Wondefruit to truly have a zero carbon footprint.
"This year, we want to make people see that what we're doing is impacting the environment -- so we're offsetting our carbon emissions," he said, sitting in front of a beautifully made PowerPoint presentation shown to press. "We're not saying it's a perfect solution, but it's a starting point to let people think. We don't want Wonderfruit to be a festival where people just say 'you should do this, you should do that'. We want to be a platform where we prove for people to see that we take action."
To offset their carbon footprint, Wonderfruit will be investing in the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve in Borneo, Indonesia. It is the largest government-approved project protecting 65,000 hectares of forest, which is also home to the largest private orangutang sanctuary in Indonesia. "We'll be a zero carbon event," he said proudly. "It should be the first of its kind in this region."