Advertisement
Published: October 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
[youtube=hlL0jB0j3YA]
phuket vegetarian
close-up of a devotee with a saw through his cheeck First a short note before we start: there are a lot of bloody pictures at the bottom of this page. Don't scroll further down if you can not stand blood....
Well, we have been in Thailand for only one week, but what a week. We spend most of our time in Phuket and a few days in Bangkok.
Phuket is your standard touristic beach destination. You might as well go to Turkey for a beach holiday, you wouldn't notice the difference except that Thai people have these tiny eyes. It's also a place that was hit hard by the 2004 tsunami. Nowadays, you can not even notice there has ever been a tsunami at all. Everything has been rebuild and there are little reminders of the earlier tsunami. Except perhaps some warning signs on the beach saying :"be aware, tsunami sensitive area". Great comfort to spend your holiday on a Phuket beach with such a warning sign next to your head:-)
At first we didn't plan to visit Thailand on our trip at all. But when we read about the Phuket vegetarian festival, we decided to make a little detour. The festival is held once a
Wat Pho
Temple in Bangkok with an enormous golden sculpture of a lying buddha year and is best known for the self-mutilation people do during the festival.
The people don't eat any meat for one week to cleanse their body.
Everybody also dresses up in white clothes as a sign of purety. During the festival a lot of devotees practise self-mutilation and stick swords through their face as a sign of total belief in their gods.
Actually, apart from swords, they stick almost anything through their faces. The general rule is: the bigger, the better as long as it's sharp enough. We have seen people with umbrellas, a sink tap, a tree branch, a gun, a model of a plane,...stuck through their cheeks.
It's really crazy and it get's very bloody sometimes. I am very glad we saw some pictures of this festival on the internet before we arrived, because I think it would otherwise have been a deadly shock to watch all this.
Devotees go into some kind of trance during the self-mutilation and by sticking funny things through their bodies, the devotee comes closer to god. So close in fact, that the devotee itself becomes an object of worship and admiration by the people. It is believed
Wat Pho
the lying buddha that during their trance, this devotees can heal or bless people. They therefore parade through the city and bless the people watching. Some people even build small shrines for the devotees in front of their house. They hope that the devotee will then stop next to their house and give it's blessing to their family.
The devotees parade through the city together with the images of the gods. Apart from that, the business of the day is to just make a lot of noise, either by extremely loud music or by fireworks. They believe the gods can hear it when it is loud enough, so: the louder the better is their conclusion. And believe me: it does get very loud. We bought some earplugs because it was just to dangerous to walk around without them. I have seen chinese fireworks before in China, but this beats it all!
In Phuket we also spend one day to visit an island (Phi Phi). Quite nice, but it doesn't beat Indonesia by far and it was way too touristic! We also did a half day safari tour. They promised “9 in 1”: a canoo ride, a trip on an elephant
phi phi island
daytrip from Phuket and an ox, an elephant and a monkey show, a jeep safari, a thai cooking course, etc.... all that in just four hours. Well, they succeeded in that and dragged us for 4 hours from one attraction to another. Nothing for us, but we couldn't be bothered to organise something for ourselves that day.
We are now in
Bangkok and Bangkok is really great. A bit chaotic, but also very much alive. They have some beautiful temples here and the shopping is fantastic. We don't have much pictures of Bangkok because our camera broke down, but we immediately bought a new one here. We also went disco hopping for one night and visited the red light disctrict. Quite strange to see all these sex tourists walking around, shopping for a boy or girl... It is all carried out very openly in the streets and you often see older men walking around hand in hand with young thai girls or boys.
Bart also did a “fish massage” in Bangkok. You put your feet in a tank with little fish and the fish come and eat your dead flesh. Raf didn't do it because he hit his
grand palace
Residence of Thai kings in Bangkok toe and was bleeding. You couldn't do it with wounds. I don't know why, perhaps the fish would eat the whole toe or something:-)
Anyways, we are know of to Vietnam for two weeks. See you on the next blog!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.186s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 12; qc: 67; dbt: 0.1063s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
julie
non-member comment
hi guys!!
i really look forward to reading the blogs!!! you guys must be having such a fantastic time. hope you are both keeping well. xx