Phuket History

I had a pretty fair idea of what I wanted to do in Phuket before I even left England, thanks mainly to the amount of people who suddenly turned out to have been here and wanted to tell me all about it. So, when my tour rep turned up in the lobby this morning with his clipboard, hard-sell face and book entitled "1001 ways to get people to do what you want them to do", he was rather surprised to find that it took him all of fifteen seconds to sell me on the idea of doing exactly what I came here to do in the first place. He probably got promoted. So, clutching my tickets for a trip to Phi-Phi Island and to the beautiful bays around the coast over the next two days, I set out to see Patong by day. As with all places, the town is considerably different without the beating music and bright lights of night time. In fact, it was quiet and relaxed this morning, full of couples walking along the beach arm in arm. At the first travel shop I came to, I booked myself onto an "Introduction to Phuket" tour which was leaving within the next few minutes and which confidently promised to show me some of the sights of the island in 4 hours. This tour set me back the princely sum of 300 Baht - about a fiver - so I didn't really expect much more than a basic drive to a couple of temples. On the whole, though, I think it was money well spent: The "English Speaking" guide was obviously from the Chinese school of English, and spoke so fast that it was hard to believe he was speaking English at all, but for 300 Baht I wasn't about to complain. Christ, for that sort of money I think I would've been quite happy with the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show! I did start to get a bit annoyed with the way the guide kept saying "Yes?" at the end of every sentence, though, as though he was trying to convince himself that he was telling us the facts. And I did start to become a bit sceptical when he informed us matter-of-factly as though talking to a group of 5 year olds that they have to train monkeys to pick coconuts for them as they have discovered that only monkeys can avoid the poisoned fruit on their trees. It apparently takes 6 months to train a monkey to do this, and there is a University for monkeys in Bangkok for this purpose, we were informed. I have just one problem with this. If it takes 6 months to train a monkey to not eat poisoned fruit, what do they do with all the dead monkeys? Our first stop on the tour was at a lookout point at the very top of the island, where we all scurried off to take our first photos of the breathtaking scenery. This is one thing that Phuket has in abundance. According to the guide, who I was starting to think was making it all up as he went along, parts of Jurassic Park were shot on the island - although people disagree as to exactly where and when and nobody seems to actually be able to remember any camera crews or anything. Looking at the views of the forests and beaches stretching away to the horizon, it certainly isn't difficult to imagine a few Raptors down there though. The highlight of the day for me was our afternoon visit to Wat Chalong, a supremely beautiful Buddhist temple built on a traditionally grand scale and somehow exactly the opposite of what I was expecting from Phuket after the obvious excesses of Patong Beach. In fact, the place is such a culture shock after arrival in Patong that it takes quite a while walking around the extensive gardens and market stalls before you even feel worthy to set foot inside. Wat Chalong is the pride of the island, a fact that was obvious just to hear our guide talk about it's history and the miracles said to have been performed there as though he considered it his honour to pass on every drop of knowledge he had ever learned about the place.
The temple had a major part to play in the war between Chinese secret societies in the 19th century. At this time the island was something of a power in Tin Mining, and Chinese workers came looking for work and started to create societies. Unfortunately, the workers started to get a bit upset when the owners of the land and tin mines decided they weren't about to allow them to partake of opium as they were used to, and they took it upon themselves to begin a murderous rampage. Locals fled to the temple where the Abbot did all that Buddhism would allow which was help rally the people to fight back against the attackers. Despite quite rigorous fighting from the Chinese side, the opium finally got the better of them and they were overwhelmed by the locals. When this all got back to the king the Abbot was called before him for a well earned promotion, and Wat Chalong became a royal temple. The temple is filled with statues, and every single inch of it is covered in gold as I should have come to expect by now. The walls are covered in paintings depicting the Buddha's life, and statues of previous abbots adorn the corridors. The grounds are amazing, gardens stretch out in all directions and are a pleasure to walk around, and today there were market stalls set up on the boundaries through which I spent a good half hour of browsing: just sitting in the grounds in silence for a few minutes is almost enough to make you want to take the vow. One room of the Wat was full of locals praying and we tiptoed respectfully through watching them meditate or sit in silent prayer, although none of them seemed to be remotely bothered or worried by our presence. Buddhists are, of course, nothing if not understanding and tolerant - something which is refreshing to say the least after spending a lifetime in the West where everything is stress and rush. Some would argue, for this reason, that Buddhism is in fact not so much a religion as a philosophy. It is, if you are interested in a slight digression at this point, a set of teachings based entirely on, not the belief in any particular divine entity, but the words of a man called Siddhartha who achieved enlightenment around 2500 years ago at the age of 35 while sitting under a pipal fig tree. These, naturally, were gentler times when a name like Sid Arthur meant you were a respected prince rather than a wheeler/dealer type from the east end of London. Anyway, Siddhartha Guatama was born and raised in ancient India in the region now known as Nepal, and had spent his early life as a prince, being given whatever he desired before being married off at the age of 16 to his cousin. He seems to have led something of a sheltered life because only as he approached his 30th birthday did he decide to actually leave the house and survey his kingdom. It must have come as something of a shock to come across the sick, the old and the dying for the first time because Siddhartha promptly announced that he needed to find the path of enlightenment, packed his bags and headed off to devote the rest of his life to abstinence from all worldly pleasures in an attempt to prevent such unpleasant things as death and old age from happening to him. Over the next few years Siddhartha became a beggar, studied under several hermit teachers, brought meditation down to a fine art and just about managed to starve himself to death by taking abstinence to the ultimate extreme and restricting himself to a leaf a day. To paraphrase the teachings of Buddha slightly here, this is the point at which Siddhartha decided he needed a new plan.
So Siddhartha created the "Middle way", which has a slightly different meaning depending on which branch of Buddhism you listen to but which is essentially a transcendental path away from self satisfaction and worldly pleasures and towards the pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment. Settling down to meditate under the Pipal tree, he told his companions that he wasn't going to get up again until he had understood the truth about everything - this he duly did after several weeks, but not before all his friends had, unsurprisingly, gone home. Siddhartha Guatama had finally achieved enlightenment and become the Buddha, or "Awakened one".
Enlightenment brought with it an understanding of the four noble truths of Buddhism, which would appear to be a series of statements which connect together logically - we crave our desires (some wish to attain pleasure, some wish to attain happiness, some wish to kill and some wish to love, etc); these cravings lead to suffering; to relieve suffering one must eliminate craving; to eliminate craving, one must follow the Eightfold path: correct outlook, correct intentions, correct speech, correct actions, correct work, correct amount of effort, correct mindfulness, correct amount of concentration. Following the Eightfold path will ultimately lead anyone to the state of Nirvana which, as a child, I firmly believed was the next state over from California! Of course, the western way of thinking tells us that happiness is whatever we want it to be. If you find true happiness in meditation and giving up all earthly vices, then that's fine - but if your idea of supreme bliss is going out on a Saturday night, getting totally rat-arsed and waking up in somebody else's bed, then that's fine too. I came across the following story while updating this entry, which I thought I would share with you for it's humour value. It would appear that one of the ex-abbots of Wat Chalong, Luang Poh Cham, was promised by a local girl that she would cover his genitals in golf leaf if he cured her with his magical walking stick. However, after being cured she subsequently forgot about her promise and fell ill again because the Thai's believe that breaking a promise will result in evil falling upon them. The girl's parents returned her to the Abbot for an explanation, whereupon he saved the day by sitting on his walking stick in such a way that it stuck out from the front of his robes and the girl was able to coat it in golf leaf, become cured again, and remain none the wiser...