Phuket Series #07: Firecracker Special

Phuket Town comes alive during the Vegetarian Festival and the most prominent sound you hear is that of firecrackers going off. It started as being a novelty cause they were outlawed in Singapore since dunno when. But after hearing the nth time of firecrackers going off, it was starting to irritate.



There was an instance when the "grand chariot" was being carried through the busiest roundabout in Phuket Town, the crowd just went bonkers. I suppose the number of firecrackers let off for a specific chariot will be a good reflection of the relative importance of the chariot. The pictures here show two which in particular bore the brunt of the firecrackers.


And just after taking the last photo here, one of the firecracker paper cartridge actually flew about 20 over metres and hit my face just below my right eye!
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#01: Introduction
#02: General
#03: Food
#04: Island Tour
#05: Vegetarian Festival
#06: Muay Thai
#07: Firecracker Special
#08: Afterthoughts

Phuket Series #03: Food

I love Thai food. And it's not just the tom yum and phad thai. It's also the beek noodles, duck noodles, pork noodles and all these sticky rice stuff, the ubiquitous street bbq selling chicken (kidneys and other parts, wing, drumstick, half chicken), pork sausage, weird sausage...but I have always stayed away from the too exotic stuff like fried grubs - cricket/grasshopper...

I didn't manage to find any duck noodle but I sure found plenty of quality beef noodles or kway teow neua (follow the red arrows):

On average, I polish off two bowls of these noodles. I don't know why I find them so tasty. Maybe they shaved some marijuana in them. I added only the chilli flakes that come in little clear plastic bags when you order takeaway. Each bowl cost something like 40baht. I'm told it's not cheap. Not by Thai standards. But it's a steal by Phuket standards, especially around Patong.

The sequence of pictures above show both the beef and pork noodles. That was dinner on the first night. Subsequently, I ate only beef noodles. I found the pork noodles less tasty than the beef.

Like I said, I had Thai beef noodles almost on a nightly basis. I buy them from different stalls and decided that the best thai beef noodles around Bangla Road is the stall near Subway (off Sawatdirak Road). The soup here is the tastiest. Maybe it's msg.

In Phuket Town itself (20 minutes and 20baht away from Patong) almost the entire town was turning vegetarian because of the Phuket Vegetarian Festival. There is a street market along the road leading up to Jui Teng shrine (by far the most popular/biggest Taoist Temple in Phuket) that was set up for the festival.







The food sold by all the foodstalls were vegetarian. I tried the noodles....but cannot be compared to the beef noodles.


I'm such a carnivore.

I bought the vegetarian noodles from this stall.

* pardon my amatuerish control of lighting...the pictures were taken on separate days and at high noon! shadows everywhere!

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#01: Introduction
#02: General
#03: Food
#04: Island Tour
#05: Vegetarian Festival
#06: Muay Thai
#07: Firecracker Special
#08: Afterthoughts

ZoukOut 2006: I'm confused....

Been to the ZoukOut 2006 site yet?

Check out the Survival Kit page: link

It says Strictly No Swimming.

















But....over on the other page, the pictures of things to bring as part of the "Survival Kit" includes....ta dah! A pair of Goggles!!!


Ok, not meant to be taken literally.....it's probably a fashion thing.

Spot The Difference!

This is Miss Japan Universe Kurara Chibana who was crowned Miss Universe 1st Runner Up.

A blogger was so sure that if the translator had gotten her answer translated correctly (lost in translation), Miss Kurara Chibana would have been crowned Miss Universe instead.

Now check out Miss Japan International Queen Baby Christina who recently participated in the world biggest transvestite beauty pageant - Miss International Queen held in Tiffany's of Pattaya. The finals were televised live on Thai iTV on October 28th....yeah, I was watching. Yippee!


Spot the difference?

No, I'm sure Miss Baby Christina did not have any extra flesh down under.

Phuket Series #01: Introduction

I think it's going to be a daunting task for me. Trying to blog about everything I wanted to while in Phuket. So instead of lumping everything into one entry (it's hard to upload >100 pictures and I actually took about >300 pictures), I'm gonna break them down into manageable sizes.

My main aim of travelling to Phuket during this time of the year is to coincide with the Phuket Vegetarian Festival. It's easy to follow when the festival starts. Just use the lunar calendar and it'll always be on the 1st through to the 9th day of the 9th lunar month. It's actually celebrated here and in Penang as well. Just not in a manner as grandiose as in Phuket. It marks the day when the Nine Emperor Gods return from heaven to earth.

So this post will kick things off. And to allow easy navigation, I'm gonna list down the various enteries at the end of each entry in the series. So once they indicate a link, it means that I've blogged about that.

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#01: Introduction
#02: General
#03: Food
#04: Island Tour
#05: Vegetarian Festival
#06: Muay Thai
#07: Firecracker Special
#08: Afterthoughts