South East & Central Asia and Africa Trip: Phuket, Thailand

Phuket is located along the southwest coast of Thailand. At approximately 200 square miles, it is Thailand’s largest island, measuring about 30 miles in length and 13 miles at it’s widest. Phuket has a population of about 350,000. There were about 250 people killed here from the tsunami on December 26, 2004.

Being an island Phuket has many beaches of all types.

Farmed fish operation.

Fish being cooked by street vendor.

Many choices provided by a street vendor.

Not sure, again, what these things are. We could not find anyone who knew and spoke English. They looked like dried jelly fish.

Typical street scenes.

Local taxi cab.

And we complain about not having enough room in the family car!

This is the Heroines Monument. In 1785 the Burmese invaded Phuket. The Governor had recently died, rather than surrender the Governor’s widow and her sister rallied the citizens and troops and successfully repelled the invaders.

We visited Wat Phranang Sang reported to be the oldest temple in Phuket at approximately 550 years old.

Three golden female Buddhas.

The temple guards are obviously more recent additions. I doubt assault rifles grenades and hand guns were standard issue 500 years ago. They might have also considered more protective body armor.

Devotees place small patches of gold leaf on statues of local deified monks.

We also visited Wat Phra Tong Temple.

There were sacred temple roosters roaming about. Reminded us of Key West, Florida.

Wat Phra Tong contains a half-buried Buddha. Legend has it that anyone who touches the statue will be cursed and die prematurely. We did not go any closer than this.