Sapam Chinese Shrine (Kuan Te Kun)

I had meant to visit the Chinese shrine at Sapam for ages. Sapam is a village about 7km north of Phuket Town. Just south of the village is Wat Sapam which I have visited before. The village is/was a fishing community. The access is just off the main road between town and the airport, about 1.5km south of the bypass road. The Chinese shrine is right at the corner at the entrance to the village. The village road is only about 500m long before you hit the sea on the east coast of Phuket.



Although the shrine is commonly called "Sapam Shrine", or "Sanjao Sapam" (Sanjao is the Thai word for a Chinese shrine), the actual name is Kuan Te Kun - the sign above says Sanjao Kuan Te Kun, and I guess says a similar thing in Chinese. I wanted to visit, as this is one of the participating shrines in the Phuket vegetarian festival, and this year (2010), the first main street procession of the festival will start at Sapam shrine on Saturday 10th October. I intend to be there nice and early, around 6am. So this visit was a kind of familiarisation trip.

It's not a big shrine compared to Kathu or Jui Tui for example, which is not surprising as it serves a small community. You can read something here about the history of the Sapam area.



The dragon above is one of 2 on the stairway at the entrance to the shrine. Everything was looking very shiny, I could see recently used mops hanging to dry and pots of paint in a shed across the road. At the time of the vegetarian festival everything is made to look its best. Statues of gods are carefully cleaned, shrines spruced up... the belief is that during the festival the gods or spirits descend into the shrines.



The main doors into the interior of the shrine were closed, but I could walk around the covered area outside where statues such as the one above were found. Also, see below.... this spiked ball (I believe) will be tied to a rope and used by a devotee (Ma Song) during the vegetarian festival - swung into the flesh of his back. There is a lot more to the festival than just Tofu :)



I have more photos of this shrine on Flickr: Sapam Shrine. I'll be back here on the 10th!

Update - photos at Sapam Shrine on 10th October:

• Sapam Shrine Vegetarian Festival

Sunny days

It's a beautiful and sunny day today. Starting to get a little colder in the nights here in Barcelona but we can still enjoy hot, Mediterranean climate on the sunshine hours - hoping to be able to do so all those days until we're leaving this town in 36 days. /T

Mashed potatoes from heaven

When I grew up, mashed potatoes was equal to: potatoes-butter-milk-salt-pepper and nothing else. Nowadays I'm trying to experiment as much as possible with it, as it goes with close to anything and the homemade version is a serious classic none can live without, right?

Sometimes I'll add herbs, sometimes bacon or parmesan - sometimes I'll make it simple with only some salt and oil, but this one I have to consider to be the favorite:

I boil my potatoes in small cubes. In the meanwhile I'll fry some very thin cut red onion and 2 small cloves of crushed garlic. When the potatoes have boiled (around 15 minutes), I'll mash them (but not too much, leave some chunks!), adding the onion mix, liquid cream, loads of butter, salt, pepper and a pinch of chili powder. This might not be either a low carb or low fat alternative, but oh so damn good. It goes especially well with grilled chicken or fried fish but really anything goes, I'm sure.

Try it!

Picture: My mashed potatoes served with fried Barracuda meat.

Which Camera?

The time has come to buy a new camera but I keep procrastinating and delaying because there are just so many different models to choose from.  I’m also a bit frustrated at the moment because no matter how much my photography has improved over the past two years, the one area that has simply not improved is my concert photography.

Obojeni Program at Exit Festival 2010 by Exit Festival

Quite simply, I want to take photos like this one.  Now December1975 gave me some excellent technical advice but one thing is for sure, I need a camera with better image stabilisation and better zoom than my current camera.  I’m looking for what is known as a ‘bridge’ camera as I am not quite ready for a DSLR.  I definitely want a viewfinder but appreciate an LCD screen and I’d like the ability to put my own penlight batteries in.  Video is not really a concern for me.  This is my current shortlist:

Fujifilm FinePix S2800 HD Digital Camera 14MP 18x Zoom 3.0 inch LCD Screen £199
Pentax X90 Digital Camera 12MP 26x Optical Zoom  2.7 inch LCD screen £215
Canon PowerShot SX20 IS Digital Camera 12.1MP 20x Optical Zoom 2.5 inch LCD screen £274
Nikon P100 Digital Camera 10.3MP 26x Optical Zoom  3.0 inch LCD screen £277

 

I guess what I am looking for from you, dear reader, is some advice.  Do you have any experience with any of these cameras? Are there any you would steer clear of or anything I should beware of? 

Any advice would be absolutely appreciated and I hope you don’t mind if I ask you lots of questions in return.

3. What language do you speak to each other?

Let us proceed with the inquiries you guys had for us.

I can understand that you might wonder about the language thing as we're of French/Greek/Finnish/some sort of Swedish-origins and none the same as the other but the answer is very simple. Besides of a lot of bodytalkin', we're using the International language of English to make ourselves understood.

It is not always we do so, though, and there are a lot of misunderstandings made (especially in arguments!) and it will most probably get plenty of more of them in the future, but at least we're getting close to where we want. It is certainly a pity that we sometimes can't express ourselves and our deepest thoughts with the most perfected words, as none of us speaks completely perfect English, but that's how it goes when choosing a partner from another country. We could of course converse in Spanish as well as that is a language we both master, but English is definitely the one in which we have the largest vocabulary - beside of our own ones.

Alex is also teaching me some French and I'm hoping to be able to speak it well after the circumnavigation. At the moment I can only boast with an excellent vocabulary of naughty and expletive words, and with those I do not get very far in life. /T

Sagone/Vico

One of those days in Corsica, we anchored up in Sagone and had a day-trekking-tour to the small village of Vico. Vico can be found some miles up in the mountains, inside of the Corsican island. A beautiful, very petite countryside village where Alex spent many of his early ages with his family. The place was so very peaceful and also reminded me of the small village in Sweden (Magra, 72 km from Gothenburg) where I grew up among horses, cows, deep forests and a feeling of being totally cut off from everything else that was going on in the big world.

As there were no buses or trains, we hitchhiked our way up on the mountains and got a pleasant ride by 1. A firefighter 2. A young man on his way to work 3. A man, his daughter and their very amusing and happy dog - in the back of their pickup along with the dog.

It was a beautiful and funny day and very wonderful to get high up in the mountains for some variation from the sea life. Too bad the owners of the horse ranch weren't there, I would have loved to have a ride and also see Alex on a horse. Next time!

The car of the village's pastor.

Beautiful view and delightfully fresh air.

Blueberries in the forest.

I told Alex to take my picture while I was standing inside of a cork tree. I wasn't there for very long though as I suddenly felt termites all over my feet and inside of my shoes!! Alex couldn't stop laughing and made fun of me for the fact that I would do anything to have a nice photo of myself. I don't understand what he means.

We were strolling along in the forest and suddenly a cow showed up from nowhere. They walk along completely free and liberated here on this island. Along with other types of animals such as donkeys, goats, cats, dogs and chickens.

Hello there little beauty!

In the back of the truck with a friendly dog.

Wordless Wednesday ~ 38: Doorway

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Drummond Castle Gardens as seen from the vegetable gardens.