Phuket, Thailand Mar 21st

We arrived at the island of Phuket this morning and today's excursion is a tour of their shrines and temples. Our guide was very good at explaining all the religious meanings, statues and religious meanings of each of the 3 different temples and shrines we visited today. They were all very different since they were of the 3 main religions of Phuket.
Our first stop was a Buddhist temple that houses a bone fragment belonging to Buddha. The temple is Wat Chalong. To enter the temple we had to remove our shoes.
Our second stop was the Nakkerd Hill and the huge 145 foot tall statue of Buddha made of pure white marble. We walked up the steps to the massive statue and around it were religious shrines where people could worship and make offerings. There were monkeys here, but none that we encountered or had our usual run-in with.
We then drove through Phuket's old town area and visited Tien Keng. This is a Chinese shrine at Sapan Hin Park. This temple was multiple buildings and we were able to take our shoes off again and walk into the largest of them. It was a square building with a lot of gold and marble floors. Inside on the top floor was a shrine. The locals pray and perform their rituals and one of the offerings is a gift of fireworks. There is a large brick structure that they fill with the firecrackers and set off about once an hour. It sounded like thousands of firecrackers exploding inside the brick structure that looked like a kiln.
After our tour we took a local 'Uber' to a restaurant that our guide recommended. Our ride was about $3.50! So much cheaper than at home. The food that I had was a very spicy curry dish and Scott had an orange coffee (coffee with fresh orange juice) after dinner. The orange actually looked like a lime since the skin was green but the taste was orange.
Then back to the ship for our 2 sea days to Sri Lanka...Read more