products of any kind and also excluding certain strong tasting vegetables and spices, is sold at specialized vegetarian restaurants which can be recognized by a yellow sign with in Thai script the word che () or ahan che () written on it in red. These restaurants serve what can be regarded as vegan food. Many Indian restaurants of the sizable Thai-Indian community will also have vegetarian dishes on offer, due to the fact that vegetarianism is held as an ideal by many followers of the Hindu faith. Indian vegetarian cuisine can incorporate dairy products and honey. Due to the increased demand for vegetarian food from foreign tourists, many hotels, guesthouses and restaurants that cater to them will now also have vegetarian versions of Thai dishes on their menu. Pescatarians would have very few problems with Thai cuisine due to the abundance of Thai dishes which only contain fish and seafood as their source of animal protein. Culinary diplomacy Thai cuisine only became well-known worldwide from the 1960s on, when Thailand became a destination for international tourism and US troops arrived in large numbers during the Vietnam War. The number of Thai restaurants went up from four in the 1970s London to between two and three hundred in less than 25 years. The earliest attested Thai restaurant in the United States, "Chada Thai", opened its doors in 1959 in Denver, Colorado. It was run by the former newspaper publisher Lai-iad (Lily) Chittivej. The oldest Thai restaurant in London, "The Bangkok Restaurant", was opened in 1967 by Mr and Mrs Bunnag, a former Thai diplomat and his wife, in South Kensington. The global popularity of Thai cuisine is seen as an important factor in promoting tourism, and also increased exports of Thailand's agricultural sector. It is a result of deliberate "gastrodiplomacy". In June 2009, the Tourism Authority of Thailand organised a conference to discuss these matters at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre in Bangkok. TAT Governor Seree Wangpaichitr said, "This conference was long overdue. The promotion of Thai cuisine is one of our major niche-market targets. Our figures show that visitors spent 38.8 billion baht on eating and drinking last year, up 16% over 1997." The Thaksin administration (2001–2006) launched the "Kitchen of the World" campaign early in its tenure to promote Thai cuisine internationally, with a yearly budget of 500 million baht. It provided loans and training for restaurateurs seeking