Chinese New Year fell on the 8th of February and we had made our way to China Town in Old Phuket Town only to discover that the Phuket Tourism Board had decided to combine the Chinese New year and Phuket Festival into one big event and celebrate them both from the thirteenth thru the fifteenth. We made our way back to China town on the thirteenth. It was a lot cheaper this time around as our friend's on Allure had befriended a Thai women and she was traveling with us. It was also great to have Maryeehah along to interpret. The town had closed off four roads for the festival and it was a night market on steroids. All the shops were open and stalls filled the streets selling all types of souvenirs, clothes, jewelry, sunglasses, and of course my favorite - street food. The vendors had brought it all out for this huge festival. The place was mobbed and as you walked, or more accurately sort of just flowed down the road, your senses were plied with all sorts of specialties. There were the usual fare and David and Zack started off with a chicken satay. We spotted one stall carving coconuts. Usually these are served with the tops cut off and a straw. We have even seen a few that are cut decoratively, with a machete of course but this stall took coconuts to an all new level. A guy was sitting on a bench and carving the whole coconut down to just the nut fully peeled with a thin knife that was made out of buffalo horn. It must have been extremely sharp because it cut through the husk like it was butter. It was amazing that this man still had 10 fingers because he was working very quickly. The other option was to have the coconut still peeled but somehow jelled on the inside. At first they said it was frozen but they cut one open so we could try it and it was definitely gelled. Agar agar is a big jelling agent here and I think that is how it was done. It was delicious and the boys got one to share. There was a guy rolling summer rolls to order and he said he could do vegetarian so we had a few of those. The vegetarian options were not many so when we found someone frying up taro root we had a try of that. I am not exactly sure what I was eating but it was spicy and yummy. The show of street food is as much of the joy as the eating. The woman had a flat circular grill top. Steps 1,3,5,7,and nine are add oil and lots of it. In between the squirts of oil the process is: start with some sort of white paste, no idea, but probably a rice paste, toss in chunks of peeled taro root and lots of raw eggs. Cook this until golden brown stirring as you go. When it is fully golden and cooked through dump on enough chili sauce to make everyone in a 15 foot radius choke and cough. Stir. Serve it up with some bean sprouts and more hot sauce. Absolutely delicious! We found the mojito guy, he seems to be at all the street markets. He makes a mean mojito. Jason did the ordering and instead of the small cup I was expecting I ended up with a bucket of mojito. You needed two hands to hold this thing. Wicked, but it did take the rest of the night to finish. Zack wanted another IV bag of juice but as he had already eaten enough junk to set his stomach rumbling he decided to hold off and get something different for a treat. He was glad he did. He found a guy just sitting on a bench by himself and sort of off to the side. He had a purpose built bench with a bucket divided into four sections. In each section was a different colored paste. He was shaping candies by hand. They were each a work of art and the process resembled glass blowing without the torch. Zack got a monkey holding a fishing pole with a fish dangling on the line. It was super detailed down to the French beret the monkey was wearing. The cost? 10 baht, about 35 cents. It was quite a show and all the kids had a candy. Another cool item we tried was a rolled pancake. Basically a 18" diameter crispy crepe spread with sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips rolled into an open log. Yeah! Zack and David finished the night with some donut sticks friend to order and coated in powdered sugar. It's a shame that we couldn't eat more because there were lots of other things to try. Zack did try to get Jason to give him 100 baht to eat a bug but Jason wasn't doing it.

There were lots of buskers set up and we watched a few shows. The disco dancing puppet guy was there again. There were the statue guys, basically you paint your body and dress to look like a statue. You sit or stand perfectly still until someone puts some cash in your bucket and then you move for 2 seconds and freeze again. We have seen some really excellent renditions of this theme. There were some guys on stilts, not sure what they are called over here, in the Caribbean they are Moko Jumbie. There was a Muay Thai boxing exposition set up and we stopped to have a look. Not much was going on but we started talking to the guy and he gave Zack some gloves. Zack got into the ring and had a go. He looked really good and got in some good punches. George, Luke and Tayah all had a go as well. Then some of the pros got in and put on a show. Kick boxing is huge in Thailand but the matches are super expensive to see so it was cool to see it here at the festival.

It was a great evening and the only thing missing was the fireworks. Chinese New Year is synonymous with fireworks and Zack has a bunch he wants to set off. And were talking some big stuff. We read that Phuket has outlawed fireworks in the town area and we did not see a single firework lit off all night so we decided not to go there. The fines are pretty stiff. We have been lighting off small firecrackers in Au Chalong but we will have to save the big ones for someplace less crowded.

Today is David's Birthday and Zack and I have baked a cake! We are going out to the yacht club for burger night with some friends. Tomorrow we will check out of Thailand and head back down to Langkawi, Malaysia. We need to get to Kuala Lumpur to renew our passports as we do not have enough pages to finish our trip. For some reason you are no longer able to add pages to a US passport. Unfortunately we discovered that little tid-bit of info 3 days before the rule went into effect. So new passports for us. We will drop them off and then head back up to Thailand as we love it here.