What’s on The Fields at Wonderfruit 2022?

Wonderers can finally reunite for a weekend of letting loose at the long-awaited Wonderfruit festival on Dec 15-18, 2022. Get your show-stopping outfits ready (you know, the ones you’d never get away with wearing in regular life). After a three-year hiatus, The Fields at Siam Country Club in Pattaya is ready to host the yearend festival. Here, you can have your fill of discovering new music and making your tribute to the iconic Molam Bus.

While the appeal for many is to throw sobriety out the window and jam to far-out tunes, a big part of the intrigue that surrounds Wonderfruit has always been its mélange of culture, art, wellness and nature. Try to not party too hard and sleep all day so you can check out these grand highlights at this year’s festival.

Try forest bathing, but make it groovy

Many photogenic landmarks dot the Wonderfruit landscape and this year sees the addition of the Ancestral Forest. This is a completely new 1.6-hectare interactive and sensory forest planted and designed in collaboration with SUGi,  the world’s leading network of Miyawaki Forest Makers. This will be no elementary walk through the woods, as it will be fitted with art installations, sounds and lights, which will offer an engulfing experience to wandering through nature. Around the new forest, there will be family workshops such as making compost tea, seed bombs and tree message tagging. After the festival, the installations will be removed, but the forest will remain.

Spot wondrous art

Art has always been a staple at Wonderfruit, but this is the first time a participatory art project is taking place. Thailand’s favorite chronicler of the Indian diaspora, Navin Rawanchaikul, and his team, StudiOK, are currently at work on a piece called Wonder OK, a painting installation will take inspiration and input from anyone part of the Wonderfruit community. The open call for Wonderers from previous years to send in their experiences at Wonderfruit has closed, so what’s left now is to count down the days until December to see if you’ve been immortalized in StudiOK’s giant painting. It will be the size of a tour bus — a tribute to the local, kitschy artwork usually found on these modes of transportation. It will also be a throwback to the days of hand-drawn movie posters, a signature style that StudiOK is highly acclaimed for.

Learn new things to do with rice

Who knew that there are over 5,000 varieties of rice grown in Thailand. The humble grain is finally getting some limelight at workshops, installations and architecture at Isaan Rice Tower, situated right at Wonderfruit’s farm which includes a rice paddy field. Get to know over 20 native rice varieties through activities that help us all reconnect with the source of food. Try your hand at making pickled organic vegetables from rice washing water, or fermenting your own potent sato (rice wine). The folks from Khon Kaen province’s up-and-coming Kaen Casual Fine Dining will also teach you how to properly pair rice with different cuisines.

Enjoy nature’s healing wonders

If you need the good graces of nature to help you bounce back from a post-festival weekend hangover, there’s much to learn from these workshops — Patom Organic Living will be holding a Terpene Bar, designed to titillate all the five senses with terpene-inspired experiences. Terpenes are basically the compounds responsible for how a plant smells; they contribute to lifting one’s mood and you’ll see them in action as a color in cocktails. To take natural soothing up a notch, fermentation instructor Auntie Chan is ready to share her knowledge on food-as-a-medicine. After her struggles with leukemia and thyroid cancer, she adhered to a chemical-free diet and has been experimenting with fruits and vegetables. Her improved condition and long-term transformation has made her eager to share her discoveries with others all across Thailand.

Talks on sustainability and nature aside, Wonderfruit has always been first and foremost a music festival, so their production and roster of global-class acts needs no elaboration. In terms of getting ready, take note that there will be lots of walking involved. Don’t bring your best shoes, and expect to take an average of 40,000 steps per day if you intend to suss out all of the side shows. Most importantly, enter with no expectations or judgements, and get ready for a weekend that will be nothing short of colorful personalities and unforgettable shenanigans.

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