Phuket Vegetarian Festival (a.k.a. HOLY FUCKING SHIT)

Where to start with this one?

The story of my attendance at this festival actually goes back almost a year. During my last trip through Southeast Asia, I had read about the vegetarian festival, but after it had already happened. Once I learned more about what happened there and saw some photos from it, I immediately put it on my list of things to see if I was back in Thailand at the right time. Conveniently, my last wedding obligation of the summer was only a couple weeks before the start of the festival, so I took it as a sign that I was meant to go.

You might be wondering what the big deal is regarding a vegetarian festival. It sounds pretty benign, if not downright dainty, right? Read on, my friends. Read on.

Other resources on the Internet can offer more details, but I'll give the abridged version here. The origins of the festival are nebulous, but the most popular story concerns a traveling Chinese opera group that fell ill with malaria while on Phuket. They adopted a strict vegetarian diet to appease the gods and, miraculously, everyone made a full recovery. Today's hybrid Chinese-Thai festival pays homage to that history and is also a chance for people to purify themselves to gain good favor from the gods for the upcoming year. In deference to the nine emperor gods, the festival is held during the first nine days of the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. All the shrines on Phuket participate, but most of the action is in Phuket Town.

It's also worth mentioning that this festival is mostly limited to Phuket and incorporates Chinese culture as well. Other parts of Thailand don't celebrate this and I've yet to meet a non-Phuket Thai person that's actually been to this festival.

As the festival name suggests, many people adopt a vegetarian diet for the festival; veggie food is found in many restaurants and offered by hundreds of street vendors. Truth be told, the diet is stricter than simply vegetarianism; it's actually a jae diet, which forbids all animal products and foods that are too pungent (e.g. onions and garlic). There are various other purification rules too, such as no sex and no alcohol. Everyone wears white, except the mediums.

During the festival, many people (mostly men, but a few women) act as mediums for the gods. For the nine days, they are possessed by spirits, sometimes go into trances, chant, bark, shake, crack whips, dance, participate in the ceremonies, and are treated with the utmost respect by everyone in attendance. Each medium is always accompanied by an entourage. For the processions, families will arrange small, red-tablecloth-covered tables on the sidewalk along the procession route; these tables will have small offerings (food and drink), incense, Buddhas, and the like. The mediums walking in the procession will occasionally stop by these tables, partake of the offerings, possibly leave some small gifts for the family, and offer blessings.

Every morning, there was at least one temple ceremony somewhere on the island, always followed by a procession, usually through Phuket Town. In the evenings, there were usually multiple temple ceremonies, often accompanied by processions. In short, there was always something going on somewhere.

To set the mood a bit, here are some photos I took at the ceremonies or around town. Old Phuket (a specific part of Phuket Town) is described as having Sino-Portuguese architecture and almost has a French Quarter feel to it (especially at night), which is very different than anywhere else I've been in Thailand.


There are many more photos in the full album.

One of the more prominent aspects of the festival was the use of firecrackers. Constantly. By everyone. It wasn't unusual to see children playing with some legitimate explosives. Talk about hands-off parenting! If Songkran is a 4-day water fight, then the vegetarian festival is a 9-day firecracker fight. There were certain places in town (the traffic circle with the clocktower comes to mind) where teenagers would gather in the evenings and set off firecrackers for hours, but the processions were the main sites of pyrotechnics. It's customary to throw firecrackers at the mediums, the small thrones being carried by the participants, and the participants themselves. And what the hell, while you're at it, throw firecrackers at your friends too. And farang. Basically, anyone and anything.

Surprisingly, the firecrackers don't hurt that much, even if they explode next to you; you feel only fleeting pricks of heat on your skin, like embers from a fire. That said, covering up with clothes is probably smart, as is bringing ear plugs, a mask, and sunglasses.


All of the video I shot comes from two of the processions and most of the footage is from the last night of the festival. Parts of Old Phuket felt like warzones; the smoke was so dense, you could barely see across the street.

Now onto the good stuff!

First and foremost, everything that follows is pretty graphic. Nothing is censored and some of the material is a bit gruesome.

Continue at your own discretion.










This is NSFW and probably also NSFL.










Maybe you want to look at some puppies and rainbows instead?










Seriously, you've been warned.










Alright, thanks for joining!

The most infamous aspect of the vegetarian festival is the mutilation. Again, it's not clear how this tradition started, but it falls within the same realm of purifying the body and appeasing the gods. The rituals take several forms: self-inflicted wounds, firewalking, climbing the "knife ladder", and body piercing. The piercing is by far the most popular activity and is also what tends to appear in Google Images search results. Most of the piercing is done through the cheeks with metal spikes, after which another object is inserted into the hole. It seems that the mediums try to outdo themselves and each other every year with crazier or more intense piercings. A few mediums were pierced through the tongue, neck, or arms instead of (or in addition to) the cheeks. The piercings happen at the temples early in the morning and then the mediums walk in the processions for everyone to see.

On Monday, I woke up at 5:00 so I could make it to Bang Niao, one of the temples in Phuket Town, by about 6:00 for the piercings. There were a lot of people, including a lot of photographers and videographers (Thai and farang), but it was still fairly easy to see a lot of the piercings up close since there were so many mediums. A lot of the men who were administering the piercings had noticeable scar tissue in their cheeks from participating in years past.


And finally, my favorite: a handgun (hopefully not loaded).


Whenever I look at those three photos, this always pops into my mind:

1. Cut hole in cheek and insert gun.
2. ???
3. Profit!

As with the SFW gallery, there are many more photos in the full album. And now that you're acclimated to seeing the rituals in still photos, check out how things looked in real life.

Shockingly, the mediums didn't appear to feel any pain. Not a single one of them winced or flinched or anything, even when having a massive spike rammed through his face. Also, there wasn't as much blood as I was expecting. Sure, there was the occasional puddle of blood on the ground or pile of blood-soaked tissues, but not as much as there should have been, considering what was happening. Not surprisingly, the same guys who participate in this also subscribe to tattoo culture. As you can see in the photos and videos, a lot of them have detailed and artistic full-back or full-sleeve tattoos.

I'm still surprised at myself at how quickly I became desensitized to everything; after a little while, it was totally normal to see weird objects being thrust through gaping wounds or getting caught in the middle of a loud and explosive storm of firecrackers. The whole week was bizarre, moody, grotesque, fascinating, and surreal. And totally worth it.

Oh yeah, and it was awesome to have super easy access to delicious vegetarian food for an entire week. Funny how I keep forgetting about the food at the vegetarian festival. I wonder why?

Full photo albums: SFW, NSFW

HK 'N BKK

It's not lost on me that the two cities I visited initially are currently epicenters of political friction. Admittedly, Thailand has been quiet lately since the junta has oppressed the country into mostly silence, but not long ago there were large, loud, and violent protests all over Bangkok. And as I write this, Hong Kong is under siege by "Occupy Central" protesters looking to send a pro-democracy message to China by stalling business downtown. Luckily for me, the timing of my trip avoided all of this, so I was able to enjoy both places without any logistical headaches caused by political unrest.

Hong Kong

That said, my introduction to September weather in Hong Kong was not a pleasant one. After emerging from the airport train at the IFC mall and grabbing the keys from my Airbnb host, I made my way to the doors when I felt a blast of heat and humidity that just didn't seem plausible, especially considering I had just spent nine months in Southeast Asia. Surely, I thought to myself, I'm in the vicinity of the exhaust heat from a really large aircon unit. I walked outside and, nope, it really was that miserable, even at 8:30 in the morning. I walked about 15 minutes to my Airbnb apartment, mostly uphill - the mid-levels escalators run downhill in the morning - with all of my stuff and way too many clothes on. The apartment was a fourth-floor (which would be the fifth floor in America) "walk-up", a cute way of saying "no fucking elevator".

By the time I made it inside, my clothes looked like I had just jumped into a pool and I had firmly decided that Hong Kong had been stricken from the list of places I'd consider living. I can deal with hot weather if I can wear shorts and tank tops and jump into an ocean or pool on demand, but if I have to dress professionally, I'm going to be a sweaty mess everywhere I go. Even though spending time in Southeast Asia has helped me acclimate to hot weather a bit, my genetics still dictate that I'm built for cool weather.

Since I had visited Hong Kong for nearly a week only a few months ago, most of the usual tourist activities had already been completed and were pretty fresh in my mind. I spent most of my long weekend exploring the city on foot, enjoying the atmosphere, taking photos from a couple skyscrapers (Bank of China and Central Plaza) that have high-numbered floors with public areas, spending time with friends, and meeting new ones.


Speaking of meeting new friends, I was heading back to my Airbnb one evening when I passed the corner bar on my street, which was filled with the usual assortment of professionals enjoying happy hour. As I glanced over, I caught sight of a familiar-looking man sitting by himself at the bar. I stopped on the sidewalk, looked at his profile for a few seconds, and decided to talk to him. The introductory conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hi, is your name Jess?"
Man: "Yes..."
Me: "Did you work for Riverbed?"
Man: "Yes."
Me: "Holy shit."

It turns out that, yes, this man was exactly who I thought it was: another former Riverbed employee, albeit one that worked in a very different department than me, so our previous interactions had been limited to faceless emails and pleasantries at company social outings. He had semi-recently quit Riverbed and was in town to attend a convention related to a new business venture. He invited me to join him for a beer, which led to another, which led to another, which led to me convincing my good Hong Kong friend Ka-Hing (another former Riverbedder) to join us, which led to barhopping, dinner, exploring the shitshow that is LKF, and ending up at a live music bar in Wan Chai until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. It was a really fun night, not least of which because a stranger-slash-former-corporate-acquaintance became a 9-hour drinking partner with a minimal amount of effort.

Speaking of LKF (Lan Kwai Fong, a popular nightlife area in the city), I ended up there again on Saturday night with a couple friends, which reminds me that this area deserves special recognition on this blog for being one of the shittiest shitshows I've ever seen. That's high praise considering I've been - multiples times - to Bourbon Street, Las Vegas, and Khao San Road. By 3:00 in the morning, multiple streets were covered in broken glass and I had seen at least half a dozen works of vomit art and four or five people - party-goers, not homeless folks - actually sleeping on the sidewalk. The whole scene was such a caricature of drunken partying that I was half-expecting Peter Griffin to stumble out of an alley and faceplant in front of me. My crude explanation for all of this: lots of early-to-mid-20s professionals with disposable income, a youthful exuberance for getting completely shitfaced, and, quite frankly, only an Asian tolerance to alcohol.

The rest of my weekend was quite mellow and I made a point of spending a solid chunk of my Sunday afternoon riding a ding ding across the island - one of my favorite things to do in Hong Kong - and practicing videography with my new camera so I could put together a montage.

Bangkok

From Hong Kong, I flew to Bangkok, where I planned to kill a few days before heading to Phuket. This plan worked out nicely for me since I didn't spend much quality time in Bangkok the last time around; whatever time I had was mostly spent in clinics or on Khao San Road. This time, I made a point of doing some proper sightseeing and exploring some more authentic neighborhoods. This was made quite easy by the fact that my Airbnb was in Ratchathewi, a very "locals" part of the city, and close to a BTS (metro) station, so I could move around the city center easily.

Tuesday was my big historical and cultural sightseeing day, so I took one of the Chao Phraya boats up the river and visited the Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew (home of the Emerald Buddha, the most important Buddha statue in the country), Wat Pho (the massive reclining Buddha), and Wat Arun (the Angkor-style temple across the river).


That evening's outing to Sirocco sky bar was filled with a lot of promise, but ended up being kind of a buzzkill. Sure, it's the highest bar in the world and has a cool view of an endless expanse of twinkling lights, but all the couches on the patio face away from the view, there's no skyline to see in that direction, and drink prices are astronomical. I paid $25 for a whiskey (one of the cheapest scotches I could find) and a water, which is more than I would pay in America at a rooftop bar, and this is Thailand! To put that in perspective, my drink was as expensive as my lodging for the night, which was a nice one-bedroom apartment in a skyrise, not a dorm in a hostel. When's the last time one drink cost you the same as a night in a hotel? You can be damn sure I ate more than my fair share of pistachios and sweet olives while slowly, slowly nursing that drink.

Wednesday was very humid and rainy, so I spent most of the day strolling through a labyrinth of air-conditioned malls downtown. That evening's festivities turned out much better. First, I stumbled upon a much cooler rooftop bar: Skytrain Jazz Pub (by Victory Monument), accessed by the same kind of questionable-looking, graffiti-covered stairwell I've come to expect in Thailand. Later on, I sipped cocktails and listened to live jazz at the Sheraton Grande's Living Room lounge, courtesy of Randy Cannon, an American expat who's been playing jazz for decades.

Not surprisingly, given that it's September in Thailand, the skies opened up late in the evening and a torrential downpour rolled through, so I cut my night short, went home, and packed for my flight to Phuket the next day. I enjoyed my time in BKK a lot more than I thought I would (except the weather) and I know I haven't discovered all the facets of the city yet, so I'm sure I'll be back soon.

Full photo albums: Hong Kong, Bangkok