By Vedabrata Rao

Edited by Oshin H.

I thought of many ways in which I wanted to share my experience of this slice of haven wrapped up in the garb of an intersectional festival of culture, community, and creativity. Even though I experienced it first-hand not too long ago — this last December 2023, finding the right words to describe this magnanimous ‘wonder’ felt a little difficult when staring at an empty word document. I must also confess that I went to ChatGPT for inspiration on what to cover — but old school as I am, reading AI’s immaculately sourced and factual report on the festival’s best qualities — wasn’t the inspiration I wanted, nor is it the story I wish to share with you.

Where to begin?

Recalling our trip to Pattaya, Thailand for the Wonderfruit Festival 2023 with friends, I asked them, “how would you describe your experience?”

One friend, drawing inspiration from Jason Silva, used a lovely two-word phrase: Dazzling Immediacy.

The man’s tripped out definition of these two words when strung together, may incite in some of you a skeptical eyebrow raise — but I kid you not, when you’re at this festival — you are so infinitely present with yourself and your surroundings that every passing moment feels like a lifetime lived in another dimension. With 25000 attendees from 144 countries, I promise you — every single one of them would agree to this.

As a brand strategist, I’m constantly in awe of the simple yet intricate connection between action and purpose. For any brand, it is important to align who you are and what you do with why you do it in the first place. A realm of possibilities suddenly opens up when you answer this ‘why.’

Here’s a glimpse into their latest sustainability report on the last edition of Wonderfruit Festival which is periodically hosted at The Fields of the Siam Country Club, Chonburi, Pattaya.

“… we invite you to connect to yourself, connect with each other and connect to nature. Move with intention, express gratitude and rise above the carelessness. Practice wonder with kindness and love.”

I love it. I absolutely love a call to arms to ‘rise above carelessness.’ The festival itself is an invitation to be curious and practice your curiosity with kindness and love; a desire to feel like we belong to one community no matter where we hail from. Each of us is there for a singular reason — to experience different cultures, cuisines, wellness, art, and music.

Of course, I didn’t know any of this before I landed up there. With the purpose of the festival understood broadly, how did it translate on ground? This is where I can truly begin recounting my time.

Getting There

Just for context, I got married in November 2023. A group of friends together bought my partner and I our tickets to the festival. One of the coolest wedding gifts anyone could ask for! The tickets went live in June of the same year, selling out like hotcakes and fast. We were lucky to have that one friend who could swipe it all on their card (we only found out later that our friends decided to cover our tickets)!

Prices varied — the non-refundable ticket was close to INR 22,000/- per person and the refundable was close to INR 25,000/- per person.Considering the four-night, five-day experience, we felt the prices were really good.

Since my wife is from Bhubaneswar, we found the cheapest flights from India to Bangkok from there itself! The one-way trip (around INR 10,000 per person) felt similar to a domestic flight in India, like going from Delhi to Goa or Mumbai. We absolutely loved our two-day stay in Bangkok but I will probably reserve that experience for another blog at another time.

For getting around Thailand, they have what you call Grab, similar to Uber or Ola in India. You can book an inter-city Grab taxi, and when you have enough people, the cost gets split comfortably. Luckily for us, we also had some of our friends attending the festival and converging in Bangkok to travel down to Pattaya together. The ride took about 2.5 hours at best with a stop in between.

We made some prudent calls while planning this trip, and when I say “we”, I mean my wife — who had proactively reserved a really nice boutique hotel via www.booking.com which was quite affordable for our duration of the stay. Being newly-weds, we did want a little comfort; in about INR 30,000/- we had 6 nights booked. That being said, there are still plenty of other affordable and budget-friendly options, from hostels to smaller hotels — and they are all neat, well-maintained, and well-connected.

It helped to have our friends stay at the same property; we could split the cab costs daily to and from the festival. Getting there was always cheaper than the early morning rides back. On average, taxi rides from our place in Chonburi to the festival at Siam Country Club cost around 400 Thai Baht. However, the return trips would cost us close to 1000 Baht due to heavy demand.

The Production of the Festival

I have to admit, this was my first international experience of a curated festival. I’d been to a few festivals in India — but as such, my love for music hadn’t quite yet translated to lived experiences of large festivals. The biggest festivals I have attended in India include NH7 Weekender and the Jaipur Literature Festival.

That being said, I have, of course, heard tales of many friends having attended Magnetic Fields, Ziro Festival, Echoes of Earth, and more.

Some of our friends (who attended Wonderfruit Festival with us) regularly schedule their time and savings to ensure they hit a music festival in a new location across the globe. Even for seasoned festival-goers in our group, Wonderfruit stood out uniquely.

The Fields at Siam Country Club in Chonburi, is not a small space. It’s massive acres of land that has been retrofitted by the festival to house 28 venues within it. Littered with food stalls, cafes, washrooms, water stations, first-aid tents, experience zones, art installations, rest areas, and IV hydration stations to bars — Wonderfruit had it all! Plus, we wore RFID tags on our wrists that functioned as both tickets and wallet (with additional recharge counters present across the venue). These RFID tags made life SO easy during our time at the festival.

12 Architectural Design Studios and countless designers meticulously crafted each of the stages across the 28 venues. There were 20 art installations representative of 4 different countries. Each space had an intention, a purpose of its own within the purpose of the larger festival. They left no stone unturned to bring their vision to life.

When you’re spending a significant amount of time in an outdoor festival — one of the biggest concerns is having access to clean toilets. Thankfully, even with a long line — at best, it had a turn around time of 5–7 minutes for anyone needing a cubicle. This wasn’t just the case for men, but more so for women — something that my wife and other friends in our group couldn’t help but admire. No matter how often I used the restroom, it felt sparkling clean, as if it hadn’t been used at all yet.

Definitely worth mentioning at this point is the fact that you are going to be trekking — and not just dancing. You will break a sweat, but trust me, you won’t mind it at all. The only time it might feel like a lot is when it’s time to leave.

Upon entering the festival, there’s a drop-off point, followed by a 15–20 mins walk to reach the first stage (including security checks). From the first stage till the last — I can’t give you numbers, but trust me when I say — it’s a lot of walking. The Wonderfruit App (iOS/Playstore) helped us locate ourselves on their grounds and navigate our way through the festival at any given time. Now imagine doing all this at night — shuffling between stages and venues, stalls and markets, until the sun rises and you want to go home at 9:00 am — under the hot sun (yes, it gets hot fast!) trekking back to the taxi pick-up point can knock the wind out of you. Now imagine doing this for every day of the festival.

(image source: Wonderfruit App)

This is exactly why the high cost of morning taxi rides back to our accommodation was understandable. Nobody wanted to wait too long after the night they had, so they were more than willing to pay the local taxis what they asked for.

Could one stay in the festival grounds? Absolutely! Camping was an option for those who enjoyed it. We found it to be a very expensive affair — not to mention, we aren’t exactly camping enthusiasts. For those who don’t mind sleeping in, there are plenty of nice and shaded spots to catch a few winks and wake up for the day part of the festival that starts by 9:30 am.

The Music at Wonderfruit Festival

There is an important disclaimer before I get into the music we experienced. Festivals like this interest us for its night schedule, more so than the day parts. This festival has something for everyone. Some of us did explore the day-time offerings — live gigs, film screenings, wellness workshops, and panel discussions on a variety of topics — but for the most part, we were all there for the music the night brought. To put another filter on it, we didn’t attend as many live gigs as I’d have personally liked to. So if you’re someone who loves the wide space of electronic music and class act DJs, then a majority of the list below will definitely blow your mind away.

The Wonderfruit app provided a comprehensive program well in advance, allowing us to create personalized schedules. The artists we knew about and definitely wanted to catch were:

1. Acid Pauli

2. Viken Armaan

3. Nightmares on Wax

4. Tinariwen (LIVE)

5. Nicola Cruz

That’s it. I didn’t know ANY of the others aside from some Indian artists curated by the artist management company KRUNK. And we found so much new music, so much GOOD new music. 155 bands and artists from 20 different countries were showcased. Read that again — 155 bands and artists from 20 different countries.

Before and during our festival, we carefully combed through the app, discussing what sounds interesting and what we wanted to check out. A lot of the programmed artists we scoped weren’t readily available on Spotify, but if you’re lucky, you might spot them on Soundcloud!

It was a collective exercise to filter out our time across the night, but for each of us individually, it was a treat to just go explore things on our own. Oftentimes, the music wafting in the air took us in directions we didn’t plan. None of the women in our group felt unsafe, and we all loved finding each other at stages — coincidentally sometimes, if not planned.

Defining genres is a challenge here, Wonderfruit presents genre-bending music of all kinds from all over the world in one place across the many venues. One of our favorite stages was the ‘Polygon’.

If you want to listen to all the banging music we danced to at the Polygon stage, then here you go —

The festival made sure to program rising artists as well as established acts. One trio that I came across on my last evening, was the Siam Bharat Electric at the Molam Stage. Uffff. If a lot of electronic, house, and dance music is about the pace and rhythm mixed in with the layers of bass and instrumentation — these guys made me hear how deep the bass can sound paired with keys, what looked like a banjo and a Sitar!

A Playground for Music Lovers

There was Disco, Funk, Jungle, Afro, Dub, Hi-tech, House, and Deep-house, to every electronic genre you can think of. Wonderfruit felt like a playground for a bunch of 25–35 year olds — we felt like we were kids again and free to groove in any which way — it was truly a space so safe that you could let yourself free and give in to the experience as much as the experience gave in to whatever you may have wanted — from its wide selection of curated spaces, art, stage design, artists, genres, food, and drinks, to so much more!

Here are some of the artists I discovered there and fell in love with:

1. Parallelle
2. Haensen&Gretel
3. Skatebård
4. Fantastic Man
5. Keimo
6. Jarl Flammar
7. Christopher Willits
8. Nadav Dagon

There’s still SO much more. There was SO much happening every day and at all times, and I don’t think anyone could singularly cover all of it. I definitely can’t even cover my entire experience in this one article.

From live music, electronic music, DJs, to sound experiences — Wonderfruit Festival is the perfect experience for anyone looking for their next music adventure beyond India without having to go too far or spend too much.

My Final Two-Cents

This festival is about sustainability. It’s about culture. It’s about rekindling a connection with yourself, the people you love, and nature. The festival is a delicate balance of bringing your inner-child alive, maturing your perspectives through art, and letting yourself run free in a space that makes you feel safe.

It’s a festival where you want to be the captain of your own ship, don the avatar of an explorer, and discover a new feeling in everything you do.

If you choose to go to the Wonderfruit Festival this December 2024, don’t forget — “rise above the carelessness and practice wonder with kindness and love.”