8 October 2008 Phuket Vegetarian Festival Day 3

Phuket Vegetarian Festival - Day 3, Friday 03 October

Another beautiful morning and once again we were off at 0700.

Today the Ban Tha Rue shrine was parading through the streets of Phuket Town. We drove to the starting point which was further outside of the town center than yesterday.

Just as yesterday the start of the parade was preceded by a fusillade of fire crackers. Today however there were at least twice as many warriors - including female warriors. Today was the first time that I had seen women with face piercings. Women, mar song, in previous events merely walked barefoot in a trance like state along the parade route. They would stop occasionally and give out wrapped candy to people - adults as well as children. On some of their stops the female mar song would also give out blessings which were much sought and appreciated by the believers along the route.

Today's warriors were much more extreme in their selection of objects to pierce their face. One man had a full sized roof top TV antenna running through his cheek! Another had a garden shrub through his face. These were not the strangest objects that I saw during today's procession. The strangest mar song was a man with two ceramic deer heads with their antlers piercing his cheeks.

The parade was more impressive than yesterday's. I got a little too close to the action once and got a little shell shocked from the fire cracker bombardment of the idols. All around me, above me, and at my feet hundreds of fire crackers were exploding. I could feel the concussions of the blasts all over my body. The air was filled with choking smoke. The combination of sound, pressure waves, blast flashes, and swirling smoke was very disorientating. I quickly got some more distance from the statues that were the focus of the fire cracker assaults. I developed an admiration for the fortitude of te young men who carry the statues under assualt for the entire length of the parade.

I am in awe by the passion displayed by all the participants. True devotion was shown by the believers. I had seen such devotion before during the Feast of the Corpus Christi six years ago in Cusco, Peru - people living their religion with their faith on full unabashed display.

Today's parade moved along very quickly resulting in Duang and I becoming separated early on. I was not able to photograph the parade and keep up with the mar song at the same time. I stopped along the route and waited for Duang to catch up. We called Khun Lak and proceeded to do a little sightseeing of the island.

We headed SE to view parts of the island. We visited the Phuket Sea Shell Museum and enjoyed the very well displayed and documented shells. From the museum we went to Rawai Beach.

Rawai Beach has a new concrete pier extending at least 200 meters into the bay. At the base of the pier is a tsunami warning siren. Roadsides are marked with tsunami evacuation routes. With today's current warning system there is a supposedly a 30 to 40 minute advance warning of a tsunami. To the left of the pier is a small village.

The village is a series of small sea shell souvenir shops, shacks, and many small fishing boats. The villagers are very poor and obviously not typical Thai in appearance. They actually are "Chao Lei" - Thai for "sea gypsy". The people are "Moken".

The Moken people live ashore during the Monsoon season which runs from June to October. For the rest of the year, they live aboard their boats out at sea going from small island to small island as they fish and dive. The Moken people according to Mr Lak are not allowed to move off of the beach. We met a couple of older men resting on a raised wooden platform under the canopy of a large tree. We had a very interesting conversation with them. We learned about free diving in the ocean, one man according to his friend is crazy from drinking too much, one man's wife had left him, and one man has trouble walking due to diving too much.

The people are very dark and resemble Indians or Ceylonese people more than Thai people. They are small and skinny. When they go in the water they wear just their underwear - briefs rather boxer style.

The Moken men were interested in knowing where we were from etc. I wandered around and took some photographs of children as well as men loading up their boats with supplies. Another boat was headed out to sea with 5 men aboard.

The Moken boats are similar to the long tail boats on the Chao Praya River in Bangkok. They are powered by a propeller on the end of a long metal shaft driven by a small car engine.

Underway the boats throw up a large rooster tail and announce their arrival well in advance.

We finished in the village and walked out to the end of the pier. At the end of the pier were two pavilions that provide welcome shade and shelter. We stopped and watched some workmen fishing. Large schools of small fish swarmed around the support columns of the pier. The bottom of the sea was flat and sandy. The water was very clean and emerald green.

From Rawai Beach we drove to Phromthep Cape to view the sea and islands. It was very very hot and Duang was not feeling well so we called it a day and returned to town.

Another interesting day.