Wanna Be Snobbery: Fun with Mom and Dad - Part 5

Have I talked yet about Mina? Have I mentioned how fun it was to see a little baby elephant walk around trying to undo the velcro on people's sandals? I'll spare you the 100 or so additional pictures I took of her, leaving you with this one. Tell me you don't want to scritch her head and I'll tell you you have no soul.

Okay, on to non-Mina related topics. We took a city tour on our last day in Phuket, visiting a local museum, shops, and temples. At the temple was this sculpture:

If you're thinking "Okay.... what?", you wouldn't be alone. The legend goes like this (skip this part if you couldn't care less about local legends, and don't be thrown of by the use of "cubit" - it's 18 inches): "This temple is known among the villagers as Wat Phra Phut, where approximately one cubit of the finial of a golden Buddha's head was told to have emerged from the ground. According to legend, this area used to be a pasture. One morning, a boy took his buffalo to graze here and tied it to the image's finial, unaware of what it really was. The boy returned home, fell sick and died, so did his buffalo. At night, the boy's father learnt from his to dig out the image. Amazingly, the ones who were digging, but not the viewers, were stung by a swarm of hornets from the dug up earth. The ruler of Thalang learnt of this miraculous incident and had a shelter built to cover the golden finial." The story goes on about how others fell to tragic deaths by trying to dig up the finial (that top knot on the Buddha's head). I have no idea what the moral of the story is, but anyway, there's a whole temple devoted to it.

Inside the temple there's other Buddha statues, covered with gold leaf. You give a small offering, and then you pick up the papers with the gold leaf inside and press it on whatever statue represents your zodiac sign. Here's mine:

After that we visited one of the local markets:

I was triple-dog-dared to try one of the local delicacies, but though it was tempting, I declined. A small sign next to the plate stated "Salted!".

Afterward, we were treated to a real lunch at an amazing mountain-top restaurant. My mom, who literally takes a week to eat a Snickers bar, even had seconds. Thai food is yummy. When it's not bug-related.

On the way out, we spotted this mother-baby pair. They fall under the "Who's Watching Who" category:

FYI, they're also building the tallest (seated) Buddha in the world in Phuket. [Ahem. You know what would be great? You people coming to visit and then actually getting to see this. Come visit!!!]