Today was the very last day of the vegetarian festival. Tomorrow all the street vendors along Ranong Road will be gone, along with all that delicious vegan food. There are still places where you can find vegetarian food; I believe Phuket Town has at least three restaurants that serve yummy veggie cuisine year-round. However, while the festival is going this city is like a culinary paradise. Abstaining from meat has given me more energy, better digestion, and when I’m full, it’s never uncomfortable.
Today started a little later than previous days because there wasn’t a street procession to attend, and no Ma Song being pierced to witness. I slept until mid-morning and me up with Rory for breakfast/brunch. He suggested “A Square” but I had eaten there tons already, and wanted to hit Ranong as much as I could today. Sure, A Square is tasty, and cheap, but you can spit on it from the On On, so you lose the benefit of a nice walk through Phuket Town.
Emrys and Kristi were still asleep of course, and Jason had slept at Jana’s, so Rory and I set out alone. There wasn’t as much food set up as I had hoped, but it wasn’t even 11:00am yet, and the day was still young. We gathered some vittles and I made sure I got some favourites as well as some of the things that I’d been meaning to try. We ate in my room, then Jason and Jana dropped in. The four of us sat on the beds and told stories for awhile, and this is honestly one of my favourite parts of the trip: just sitting around with good people and having great conversation.
I haven’t really made friends yet in Australia, with the exception of one special girl who lives South of me in the Blue Mountains, and you’ll hear about her soon enough. So for now, getting to sit around and shoot the shit with people my own age, with similar interests, and some that knew me in my previous life, well it was all quite comforting to be honest. Jana made remarks about how much happier I seem these days. I know with every cell in my body that I’m infinitely happier in my new life, but having a friend observe it and remark on it is a really great feeling.We ended up going back to Ranong a few more times today so I won’t keep bringing it up, but just understand that I may have spent 400฿ (about $16 AUD) on food today and that is quite a feat!
We were getting ready to head to the Montri/Phuket Road roundabout to watch the city blow up. I had traded flip flops for my skate shoes so I woudn’t have to worry about burned toes, and I put on long sleeves to protect my arms. All the photos I’d seen of the finale looked really intense, and Jason confirmed this. I saw Emrys heading out in his flip flops so I said:
“Hey, you might want to go with shoes ’cause of all the firecrackers tonight.”
“Man.” Emrys stated with his thumb pointed at his chest, before pointing to his crotch as he said “Penis!”
“Ah-hah…” I said, and just thought to myself that he may change his mind later, and regret the stubbornness.
We set out to find our spot. The streets were lined with people holding cases of fireworks and firecrackers. Most people had cases of firecrackers in red paper, with tiny firecrackers fused together one hundred at a time. Lighting one wick gave you a couple seconds to toss it before they all went off in a long string of machine-gun bursts. Many people had hundreds of these. Some people had entire cases of “crazy robot” which can only be described as a quarter-stick of dynamite preceded by a brief whistle (get the fuck back!) and a small display of sparks.
We stood right in the middle of the roundabout. Traffic was remarkably heavy, I thought the streets would be closed. There were tons of motorbikes (the Thai minivan) braving the chaos.
Things were ramping up, with the sky starting to light up with roman candles, bottle rockets and even some big cakes that sent seemingly endless bursts of fire into the sky. The people driving by were being pelted by firecrackers. The beds of pickup trucks seemed to be a crowd favourite target. One unfortunate young boy had a single firecracker land right in his hair, which proceeded to smoke like mad before his father ran across the truckbed to flick it off his head. Before the truck disappeared from sight, the father sent back a deathglare. I guess the “land of a thousand smiles” finds its limit when you almost set a little kid’s head on fire.
The air was starting to get smokey, and our group of six was turning into another favourite target. I can’t really blame them, since our six wide-eyed Farang really stuck out. Not only were we tall (well, not Emrys), and white, but most of us were visibly pierced, stretched and tattooed. People kept coming up to us to get their photo taken with our group. Rory said it best: “Hey look honey! White people!” There were four or five young local guys to our left who started throwing a lot of firecrackers under our feet. We were all laughing too, as we tried to kick back the firecrackers before they started exploding. Some other locals who’d been laughing along with us started handing us some of their firecrackers, along with a long fat incense stick to light them with. This “war” caused a ton of giggles and got a lot of attention from the locals. This is about the time that our opponents opened their case of crazy robots. You really don’t want to be within 10 metres of one of those when they go off.
Our opponents pulled one out and started to throw it toward us. They were only kidding though, and were falling all over each other laughing at our reaction, which was basically terrified scrambling. Instead, they launched it into traffic, and I watched three unlucky ladies ride up to it on their motorbike as it blew up, and they definitely wobbled on their wheels from the force of the explosion. Our opponents kept lobbing the crazy robots into traffic, and I bet you that one of those could crack a car windshield if it landed close enough!
All around us was the sound of firecrackers, shouting, laughter, honking horns, beeping bikes, whistling fireworks and the crackling in the sky as they boomed and faded. Just as I started thinking that this was getting intense, the crowd instantly mobilized and ran full-tilt off toward a side street. I turned on my video camera and started running too, because the Ma Song were coming, and this downpour of firecrackers was about to get biblical.
I pushed through the crowd so I could throw myself right into the fray. The Ma Song and their carried chariots were running down the street, and the barrage of firecrackers from bystanders was surreal. I could hardly breathe, the smell of sulfur was heavy in the air, and the flashes from the explosions combined with their concussive force shook my body as I shielded my eyes. I didn’t even notice that a pack of firecrackers had landed on the back of my neck until they started blowing up and singed my flesh.
When the chariots pass a shrine, they stop while an unreal amount of firecrackers is unleashed. People try to lob the explosives into the chair of the chariot. Poles wrapped in long strings of firecrackers are lowered. I call the poles “boomsticks.” the boomsticks were long bamboo poles with a string of 1000 firecrackers and a red box at the end. When the string detonated all the way to the top in a long machine-gun ratatatatatat, the red box would blow, sending down a shower of massive red confetti in huge flakes. I could only handle about ten minutes at this proximity, then I moved back to watch the rest of the chaos.
As it died down, we walked back to the On On, and the cleanup crew were already on the heels of the procession with their brooms. The ground was covered in bits of red paper and the cardboards shells of fireworks that had met their destiny. My whites were stained. My ears were ringing loudly. Shower, then sleep.
