February 16th, 2013 - Chinese New Year Festival in Phuket Town

It’s the year of the snake, and we’ve just returned from a fantastic evening in Old Phuket Town! Phuket’s Chinese New Year Festival for 2013 is being held from February 15^th-17^th in conjunction with the 14^th Annual Old Phuket Festival. This is all taking place along four main roads: Thalang, Krabi, Dibuk, and Phang Nga. For the first time during our trip so far, pedestrians actually outnumbered vehicles—by a lot. The streets were teeming with people tonight.

A shot of one of the streets, before the festival had even really started.

Early this afternoon, we had our taxi driver drop us off by Soi Rommanee, one of the roads in Old Phuket Town. I say ‘by’ because he couldn’t actually take us there since the street was being blocked off for the festival, so we ended up next to this giant golden dragon statue (it was still daylight at the time, but the dragon looks most impressive at night, don’t you think?):

The Golden Dragon Statue in Sirikit Park (Queen Sirikit Garden)

The streets were lined with red paper lanterns and various other decorations intended to promote luck and happiness for the coming year. As the night fell, the red lanterns looked like floating red moons, swaying in the breeze. They were one of the most beautiful things we've seen in Thailand, and both Geogirl and I found ourselves pausing in the middle of the crowded streets just to look up at them.

Red Paper Lanterns Lining the Streets at Dusk.

We arrived in Old Phuket Town long before the party started, so our first order of business was to meet up with Mike for a coffee at Pinky’s and then lunch at a place called The Natural.

The Natural Restaurant

The Natural was filled to the brim with neat stuff—old-fashioned bicycles hanging from the railings, plants sprawling over every surface, old records lining the walls of one hallway, tables that appeared to be haphazardly constructed out of chunks of ancient trees, tribal masks hanging from the ceiling, elephant and lion statues, computer monitors and old TV sets gutted and transformed into aquariums, and a huge fountain by the entrance with a plastic duck floating in it and a few massive koi fish swimming inside.



I think it was about three stories tall—maybe two?—but I got so turned around with all the flights of stairs that it felt more like five stories. From the outside it looks like an intriguing little place with a shocking quantity of plants, but from the inside it’s like walking into an artist’s elaborate fantasy world. And if that wasn’t reason enough to visit, the food was fantastic. The lychee shake alone was worth the trip.


Just prior to the festival beginning, we wandered around the area for a while. Mike, who is friends with everybody, introduced us to the artist that runs the Drawing Room Art Gallery. It’s located in a building that used to be a bank and has since been converted into an eclectic little gallery with paintings and sculptures spread throughout the main floor studio. It is open to the street—no windows or walls—so you can just walk right in and watch the artists paint or draw near the back of the room.

This is Isara, who was nice enough to let us take a picture of him and some of his artwork. The level of detail in the drawing he is standing next to is amazing, by the way. You can check out The Drawing Room at: facebook.com/trafalgar.idsio

It was a very cool place, and for the festival, The Drawing Room set some paintings out in the street for the perusal of passersby. There were also pieces of chalk scattered around, which kids were having a blast with, scrolling their art across the concrete. I suspect this was The Drawing Room’s doing, but I don’t know for sure. Whoever came up with the idea was a genius, though.



Dozens of little shops were set up, selling all sorts of items, from clothing to bubble-blowing plastic fish. The street food was especially interesting. I had this waffle-donut thing with some sort of purple jam inside—why this delicious deep-fried ambrosia isn’t a staple at Tim Horton’s is beyond me.

Other options included taro and chocolate ice cream, rice, curry dishes, and fried cockroaches.

Street Food. Yes, those are cockroaches and worms.

There was a wide variety of entertainment available at the festival. And I do mean wide. The first thing that caught our attention was a stage performance in the park that featured a bunch of adorable little kids dressed up in (what I assume to be) traditional Thai costumes. They sang, they danced. It was pretty cute.

Adorable Kids Performing Traditional Thai Dances

A short walk from the stage found us closing in on a cluster of people who were enraptured by the performance of a man dressed in a fuzzy yellow wig. Two manikins were attached to his body with a series of poles to simulate the presence of backup dancers as he danced to Gangnam Style. It was super enthusiastic dancing, too, which was even more impressive when we returned around four hours later and he was still dancing to Gangnam Style. That’s dedication right there.

Thai Gangnam Style Manikin Dancing - Street Entertainment

Other entertainers included a Christian choir, some musicians—young and old—playing various instruments with varying levels of skill, Sailor Moon cosplayers (I admit, I was pretty thrilled about that), people on stilts, costumed women covered in elaborate body paints and posing as statues, and a Thai heavy metal band.

Since we’d just stopped to buy some street food (another waffle for me, coconut this time—I have an addiction to breakfast foods), we took a break on the steps of what I believe was a bank, and listened to the Thai heavy metal band perform. It was very loud. One might even say painfully, bleeding-from-your-ears, oh-god-make-it-stop loud. I’m not qualified to judge them on quality, since I’m not a heavy metal enthusiast, but they sounded exactly like every other heavy metal band I’ve ever heard…so I suppose they conformed well to their genre? They sounded very angry, but I don’t think they really were, since, you know, they’re at an awesome festival in Thailand so there’s not a lot to be angry about. Also, every time they took a break between songs, they thanked the audience very politely for listening. Anyway, want a sample? Sure you do!

We also managed to wander into a temple, specifically the Ting Kwan Tang (Saengtham: Shrine of the Serene Light). The architecture here was breathtaking, and in the courtyard area a tall tree was laid out horizontally on the ground, ready to be raised, presumably after visitors had finished covering it in bits of gold foil and hanging little lantern-type objects from the branches. We didn’t wander too far in, since we were uncertain as to the social protocols involved, but it was definitely interesting to watch.

Ting Kwan Tang (Shrine of Serene Light)

The Tree

Entrance to the Shrine

Overall, the bulk of our day was spent wandering the streets and enjoying the sensory experience the festival offered. As far as festivals go, this one was probably the most entertaining I’ve been to.

Just when we thought our night had reached its end, we tried to find a taxi. Now, normally you can’t walk four steps in Phuket without someone offering you a taxi ride, but this is never the case when you actually need a taxi. Never. Suddenly, every taxi driver in the city has packed up and gone home and you’re wandering the streets wondering how déclassé it would be to scrawl ‘Taxi?’ on a piece of cardboard and just start waving it around until someone takes pity on you.

At first, we figured that we just had to get out of the festival area (which was blocked off to traffic) and there would be seas of taxis at our disposal. As we went further from the site of the festival, the streets got darker, the alleys sketchier, and the roads more desolate, until we were about to turn back.

And then, salvation. Not in the form of a taxi, like you might expect, but in the form of a hotel.

You see, I’d read something (I think it was in Lonely Planet's Best Ever Travel Tips, but I don’t remember for sure) before our trip, and they quite wisely suggested that if you were in desperate need of a taxi, you could walk into a random hotel and ask for help. We did exactly this, going up to a nice Thai gentleman who didn’t speak English but was nonetheless able to direct us up the driveway to the hotel staff.

I don’t know if this asking-hotels-for-taxis advice is common sense for most people, but it wasn’t for me. My first thought is always to walk somewhere if I can’t get a ride easily, and walking from Phuket Town out to Panwa would be akin to walking from Calgary to Okotoks. They look close on a map, but they are not close enough to walk, let alone in the dark, on a highway, through the middle of nowhere, and with no idea how to get where we were going. So yes, I did have enough common sense not to try that, but it was a close thing. I was very grateful for the hotel tip, and for the ladies who helped us out by calling a taxi for us even though we weren’t staying at their hotel. It was a bit more expensive than it would have been otherwise, but at that point I’d have paid a lot more for a lot less.

We got home safe and happy so I’d consider this a highly successful day!

- LuckyStar