Since we live along the main route from Samkong to the center of Phuket City, the first of the several traditional parades for the Phuket Vegetarian Festival ran right past our apartment. Even more conveniently, it came by just before breakfast as I was getting ready for work. It had stepped off from Samkong shrine at 7:19am, an auspicious moment, and covered the 500m or so to our apartment in about 15 minutes.

Leading the parade were school children carrying yellow flags, the emblem of the festival. Behind them were trucks hauling images of minor gods and young men with sedan chairs for the more important ones. I don't know if it's a traditional part of the festival, but at one point a number of motosai saaleng (motorbikes with sidecars and awnings) came down the street distributing coconut ice cream cones.

The shocking part of the parade came at the end. I had seen pictures and braced myself for the sight of the maa song, who mutilate themselves to take on all the bad mojo from the devout followers of the festival's purification rituals. But the reality of young men with huge spikes hanging out of their cheeks or, in one case, several curls of flex tubing winding in by the cheek and out by the mouth, was a little unsettling. Plus, there was visible blood. Each maa song had a handler to guide them and to care for the wounds. Many were quivering and apparently in some sort of ecstasy, oblivious to the scene around them.

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Up the street from our apartment, about 300m to a T-intersection then left for another 100m, sits the Samkong Shrine, a Chinese temple and one of the focal points of the annual Phuket Vegetarian Festival celebrations. I didn't have any sense of how big a deal the festival is for Phuket until the couple of weeks beforehand when workers erected booths lining the street in front of the shrine. Lights were strung across the street. Yellow flags, a traditional symbol of the vegetarian festival, started appearing along every major road. By the beginning of the festival Sunday, the area surrounding the Samkong shrine was decked top-to-bottom in yellow and red and had taken on a carnival atmosphere.

As with all Thai festivals, food is very important. In front of every shrine I have seen in Phuket City, the streets are lined with food booths. On sale are amazing all-vegetarian foods, from egg rolls to noodles, soups and spicy main dishes made from bean curd.

Not wanting to miss any of the dozens of ritual celebrations, I had planned to be on-hand at the Samkong shrine for the raising of the Ko-Teng pole, a symbolic conduit that the god can use to transit from heaven to Earth, and the hanging of lanterns at the top (presumably to light the way). Unfortunately, we missed it. I had thought the ceremony at the Samkong shrine would be at midnight, but one of the maa song, or "enchanted horses", told us that they finished the ritual earlier in the evening. If we waited around, he said, we could see them usher one of the gods into the shrine. We were pretty tired, so we took some pictures and talked more to the maa song, who are responsible for the rituals and who will perform superhuman feats, like firewalking and piercing, later during the festival. Then we headed home.

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The prospect of returning to my country as it struggles with the greatest financial crisis the world has ever seen is strangely appealing. Somehow I feel that I want to be there to go through it with my fellow Americans. The thought that I might return to a country in the midst of a transition between President George Bush to President Barack Obama makes me even more enthusiastic.

Yes, I've decided to return to California. My main reasons for leaving Phuket are that my employment here has not turned out the way I hoped. I settled down here with intention of staying for at least a couple of years -- at least enough time to leave a definitive mark on Phuket Post. But a number of things have led me to conclude that I won't be able to do what I want to do, and I won't bother my few faithful readers with the gory details.

Today is as good as any to make this announcement. I purchased my return ticket this morning, and I'll depart Bangkok in the early evening of Nov. 6 and land 20 minutes later in San Francisco. Thanks to crossing the International Date Line, I'll get back the full day that I lost in mid-January when I came here. If only the flight were 20 minutes long. Total travel time will be along the lines of 16 hours. Ugh. I don't think there's a longer possible flight in the world than Bangkok to San Francisco.

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While staying up far too late to watch news from the US a couple days ago, I ended up in an interesting discussion about politics with my sister Cathee. During our IM chat, I spun out my thoughts about the paradigm shift I think the financial crisis represents for the role of the US in the world:

i'm convinced that we're at a point where our country faces a completely new reality ... this financial crisis is the end of the hegemony the us had held over the world since the ussr crumbled ... really ...

the us has mostly sidelined the un, and it will remain irrelevant for the time being ... though as the us diminishes in importances in the world, other nations may refashion the un to work for a new world order, and it may revive at some point ...

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I don't usually go to sleep so late, but last night I found myself awake at 2am watching the news from the US. When Duk and I returned from the gym about 10pm, Bill Hemmer on Fox News Channel was bugging out with all of the news of the still-young day: renewed negotiations on Capitol Hill over the collapsed financial bailout bill, a skittish New York Stock Exchange and the drama leading up to the first presidential debate between senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

It felt like a defining moment in US history. My first instinct was to think of the possible negative definitions. The result of the mess in the financial system meant that the US would likely accelerate in a general downward spiral of overall influence in the world. Also, Senator McCain's crazy move to inject himself into the middle of the bailout negotiations seemed like it would only accelerate his decline the national polls.

The following morning I woke early to catch the big news at the closing of the  day in the US, the debate. I thought Obama looked good and that McCain seemed tough, annoyed and prone to repeating talking points rather than engaging either the issues or Obama. As it turns out,  that reaction was pretty typical.

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Yes, the recent lapse in my daily posts started with a head cold, which took me out for three days of nothing but sleep (and a visa run to Ranong). But several other events came down in recent days, including one related to this cryptic clue. Of course, I'll tell all soon.

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I did eventually make it to Ranong, and I got my new entry stamp. Much of the van ride up and back was a blur, as I slept the whole time with a heavy head cold coming on. But the ferry ride was quite spectacular.

We arrived at the dock after having lunch in town and had to get exit stamps before we boarded our boat -- the only one with an enclosed cabin, thankfully, among a flotilla of longtail boats with no shade. The immigration checkpoint is the most laid-back one that I've ever seen, and there was no real security, just two separate queues, one for departing and one for arriving. Locals streamed past, coming and going from longtail boats that pulled up to the large concrete dock.

We boarded our boat and sped up river, or out into the bay. I'm not sure of the geography of Ranong, so it could also have been across the sound or river inlet. It was very beautiful, with typical wooden shacks built on the waterline, here and there a tall, golden image Buddha set among the buildings. We had to motor slowly past two further immigration checkpoints on the water, both of them shacks with wooden piers. After another 15 minutes or so, we were in Burma.

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At this point, I think that me and Khun Boo, the senior production artist, have worked out a good routine for developing and executing cover concepts. The formula is to have some large central element coming into the frame from the lower left. Then the main headline at the top, and subhead and teaser text running down the right side. It's a rather common way of approaching magazine covers, but to my mind, the Phuket Post's covers have never been better.

Our cover story looked at the famed Phuket Vegetarian Festival in three parts: a profile of one of the maa song, or "enchanted horses" who perform superhuman feats during the festival. Khun Tucky turned in sidebars detailing the schedule of events and some notes about traditions involved in the festival.

Also in this issue, Khun Jang turned in an extensive examination of the efforts of local leaders to promote tourism in Phuket in the aftermath of anti-government protests that closed the airport. In all, I felt that it was a successful issue, with a good mix of content.

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On a gloomy, overcast morning, I stood outside for an hour beginning at 6:30am. I read RSS newsfeeds on my iPhone while I waited for the minibus to pick me up and take me to Ranong, Burma so I could get a new 90-day entry stamp on my visa.

But the minivan never showed. I called the company that arranged the visa run at 7:30am only to learn that the driver of the minivan thought I had cancelled and never stopped at the pickup location. So no visa run for me today. I hopped on my motorbike and drove back to the apartment feeling totally frustrated.

The morning set off a bout of culture shock, and for much of the rest of the day I just slept at the apartment, listening to jazz and reading news of the presidential campaign back home.

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Five days ago on Sunday, one of Duk's massage clients told him about a concert of traditional singing and dancing in Phuket City. The concert was part of the Wai Pra Chan festival to respect the moon. Phuket has a strong Chinese influence, and Duk said the festival came from the Chinese tradition, when the people would gather to offer moon cakes and fruit and to wear Chinese costumes in hopes that the moon would bring good fortune and wealth.

So after sunset, we took the motorbike to the Chinatown area downtown. (Chinatown is basically right down our street. We live on Yaowarad Road, though a kilometer north of the center of town in an area called Samkong. In Thailand, Duk explained, Chinatowns are usually located along Yaowarad Road, and in Bangkok along Yaowarad Road is where you'll find the capital city's burgeoning Chinatown.) We ate dinner there at an interesting-looking restaurant in an old building, which Duk estimated to be 75 years old. It was smack-dab in the oldest part of Phuket City, and the building was among the clutch of Sino-Portuguese buildings bearing the unique building style of Phuket, which draws influence from the Chinese and the Portugese.

After dinner, and after our server directed us to the correct location for the concert, we drove to the public assembly hall, Larn Nawa Min, which literally means "ground for the King." There was a crowd outside taking pictures, which is pretty typical of public events in Thailand. Along the sidewalk was a long table heaped with offereings to the moon. Duk and I have been eating rather a lot of moon cakes lately, and I've developed a taste for them. So I really had to restrain myself from grabbing one off of the table and having dessert.

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