Boba for Ganesha? Devotees offer bubble tea to Ganpati at this Bangkok mall

While majority of India was busy preparing ladoos and heating trays of modaks for Bappa this Ganesh Chaturthi, a video from Bangkok captured the attention of the internet. The internet, predictably, went crazy when content producer Piya Ping posted a video of followers at a Ganesha shrine in the Thai capital lining up cups of bubble tea as offerings.

Ganesha may get modaks in India, but in Bangkok, devotees sometimes say thank you with cups of bubble tea

Wait, Boba? For Ganesha? This isn't some one-off gimmick cooked up for Instagram. In Thailand, Ganesha has long been a beloved figure, worshipped as Phra Phikanet, a deity associated with wisdom, fortune, and success who is revered by Thai Buddhists as much as by the local Hindu community. And in Thai culture when a prayer is answered, you say thank you with food.

Which is exactly how boba became a devotional offering in the first place. The trend traces back to at least 2019, when Thai devotees started showing up at shrines with trays of bubble tea as a thank-you gesture after their wishes came true. Social media loved it then too, with people cracking jokes about drink-loving deities and sharing their own stories. So really, Bangkok’s Ganesha has had a boba habit for years and this Ganesh Chaturthi just happened to be the moment it went properly viral again.

As with any offering-goes-viral moment, the comments section did not disappoint. Some users joked about the financial commitment of a boba-loving god (regulars apparently show up with dozens of cups when a wish comes true — your local bubble tea shop's dream customer). Others were simply charmed, calling it a genuinely sweet fusion of two very different devotional cultures colliding over a shared love of something sugary.

Ganesha is worshipped in Maharashtra, Mauritius, and Malaysia, and each diaspora and local culture incorporates him into what is already familiar and cherished. In Bangkok, that drink is one of the most popular on Instagram. Watching Bappa be offered an iced milk tea with a fat straw was both comical and surprisingly poignant. It is not disrespectful; rather, it is non-performance-based devotion.

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