Weekend in Phuket

We stayed with a Thai woman who is the English teacher at Chow Tai Mai School. The guys are building a green house there and she invited all of us to come and stay with her during the festival.

Enjoying the feast Pi Ya, the English teacher, made for us

Phuket Town itself is a slum. The dirtiness is accentuated by the various smells as you walk through the downtown areas. To get away from this filth, we went to a clean movie theatre and saw Red Eye- OK movie.

On Saturday we walked around the town a bit and then decided to go to Phatang beach. Housemates and I on Phatong beach
We took a tuk tuk (small taxi type vehicle that overcharges) to the west side of the island and there we found a very touristy paradise. The beach was gorgeous, with warm water full of jet skis, parasailing boats and water skiers. Instead of returning to Phuket Town to see people in the festival walk on coals, we stayed on the beach. They have a lot of outdoor bars right on the sidewalk and a lot of street vendors to bargain with. After dinner we sat at an outdoor restaurant and enjoyed live music from two bands that were taking requests all night. One of the bands had all African American members and they played mainly salsa, reggae and island type music. The other group was Thai and they played all of the same songs we heard at the boat yard about a week ago from a different Thai band. I wonder, do they all share 1 play list?

1 of the many temples used during the week long Vegetarian Festival

This morning we woke up early to go watch the parade for the Vegetarian Festival. The streets were packed with people in white clothes (representing purity). Wearing white clothes is one of the criteria you must meet in order to enter the temple. I’m not sure exactly what goes on in the temple, but I think I witnessed more than enough on the streets. There were shrines on tables all over the place and groups of people in the parade clustered together around 1 person who had a large object pierced through the side of his/her (I only saw 1 girl with the piercing) mouth.

Crowd gathered around a table altar as part of the procession (parade) on Sunday. Most people wear white as a sign of purity because the Vegetarian Festival is about purity and cleansing.