Last Days in Phuket

I thought I would try to take advantage to see the famous Vegetarian Festival while being in Phuket, so I planned a day at some of the temples to see some of the events. I went to one temple to see fire walking. Although it said it started at 3 the actual firewalking didn’t start till about 4, the rest was ceremonial preparation. I got there early and got a good spot and waited, the hot ashes making the already hot day even hotter. As the first ceremonial dressed man came out and every one started taking photos I thought “Here we go”. He went to each of the four corners around the fire pit where there were little tables set up with smoking embers and little statues. The whole time he was shaking his head from side to side and talking to himself. At first I thought perhaps he was saying to himself that there was no way he was going to do this. Later I realized after many other men in ceremonial clothing shaking their heads and repeating the ritual came out that it must have been some kind of trance preparing them to walk on the hot coals. After being cleverly pushed out of my good spot the firewalking finally began but after waiting for so long I could only handle about 15 minutes - my feet had already gone numb a few times from not moving! Giving my spot to someone else I looked for another vantage point to watch but soon it was over and they were all inside the temple (doing what, I don’t know).

I also went into Phuket town to try and see some other events but after a couple of hours of loud firecrackers (intentionally thrown at tourists from what I could see) and dirty fireworks I didn’t feel like staying for the finale, which was just going to be a whole lot of firecrackers and noise so I took a cab and went back to my hotel – I felt like I had already had enough hearling loss for one evening.

What I was really interested in seeing was the people peircing their cheeks with large objects (which can be seen if you do any Google image search for “Vegetarian Festival Phuket”, and what the festival is famous for), but I was told that I had missed it a couple of days before. I naively thought they would be walking around for the whole festival with swords piercing their cheeks!

The next day I wanted (as our last day in Phuket) to go and see some of the temples that I didn’t get a chance to see the day before as well as check out the Sino-Portuguese architecture. I don’t know if it was all the smoke I inhaled but I was feeling so bad that I barely left the hotel. We did run a couple of errands – we went to the mall to get a mobile phone for me. While we were there we tried the fish spa (where these tiny little fish, known as "doctor fish", eat away any dead skin - boy does it tickle!!) and I had my nails done. That night I left to do my visa run.