Phuket Vegetarian Festival 2011

Facial piercings Phuket style

This has to be one of my favorite Thai festivals. It is to me very Thai Chinese.................I understand it is an Chinese Taoist tradition, but it seems to me it has evolved to become quite Thai now. The festival is full of Thai idiosyncrasies; for example it is a VEGETARIAN festival, so where are the veggies? Thais will eat rice all day long fried or boiled, they eat noodles and they eat small portions of meat with large portions of fat. Modern Thais love to eat Mc Donald's, Burger King and KFC. seemingly though all Thais resent vegetables so this Vegetarian Festival is more a lack of meat festival. On sale there were noodles with fake prawns and fake pork, the noodles were OK but the fake meats were terrible. I even saw pretend Sushi/Sashimi with fake raw fish and shrimps! After a few days in Phuket town I needed to get out just to eat some vegetables.

Hacksaw blades through the lower lip

I spent only 2 days watching the ma song procession and then went back for the final "Kaboom" fireworks come war zone experience of deafening firecrackers (I forgot my ear plugs in the excitement) and the ma song procession. The finale was on the Sunday and it didn't rain in Phuket Town. The air becomes so thick and it feels something similar (I imagine) to a war zone, the blast can shake the proximity and really rattle the ear drums................I find it a rater exhilarating. The streets were totally packed with kids and families and tourists mostly from other parts of Asia and loads of photographers. The scene looked a little like this

In front of the Metropole hotel

 i read somewhere that an estimated 6 million photographs were being taken per day. I am sure that for photographers it's a fantastic time to get shooting, I myself had a blast :)

A group of photographers getting a close up on the blast

We went to the local market early Monday morning to stock up on curry pastes and Kapi before heading back to Bangkok. The market was all but empty as everyone had been up even earlier than us in eagerness to get in to some meaty foods after all that rice and fake meat. I'll bet that Mc donalds and KFC did a roaring trade during the festival. I walked past and it seemed to be full of local teenagers who no doubt told their parents they were just going to a friends house.


All in all an enjoyable time, should anyone have some pics they would like posted email them through and we put up some of the best.

A devotee carrying umbrellas

A man using his tongue to sharpen an axe