Thursday, October 9, 2008

Phuket Vegetarian Festival

This past weekend, I went down to Phuket to the annual Vegetarian Festival. The festival is a nine day event that occurs in the ninth month of the Chinese calendar. In addition to abstaining from meat, many of the festival participants participate in sacred rituals which they believe will bring them good luck. Such devotees are known as Ma Song.

The sacred rituals include fire walking, climbing ladders made of blades, and piercing one's cheeks or tongue with a variety of objects. Each day of the festival starts with a parade originating from one of the many Chinese shrines throughout the city. A large part of the parade consists of Ma Song who have pierced themselves as well as those around to support them. Those supporters wipe their faces, help them drink water, and sometimes help to carry the items used to pierce the particularly devoted Ma Song.

You see the participants are no longer content to pierce themselves with more "common" items such as knitting needles. A certain one upsmanship seems at play. I witnessed participants that had pierced their cheeks with knives, swords, guns, recorders, metal poles of all sorts, and even trees. A few imaginative folks had model boats attached to their faces.

I took pictures on Saturday and Sunday, the biggest two days of the parade. I arrived Saturday morning via a thirteen hour bus ride. It was Tim's idea, and I don't think I'll do it again. The seat was a little bigger than a coach airline seat, and reclined a bit further. We travelled at night, so I could sleep some of the time, but it wasn't like sleeping in my bed.

After arriving at 7:00 am, I was able to check into my hotel, and within an hour I was taking pictures along the parade route. It was only a fifteen or so minute walk from my hotel, so I didn't have to take a taxi.

Sunday is also a big day for the parade. I took a motor cycle taxi to the temple where the parade was to start, but I got their too late. The brochure said that it started at 8:00, and I arrived at 8:20 or so. After observing the parade for a few minutes, I suspected that I had missed a lot more than the first twenty minutes. A quick conversation with a fellow falang confirmed this.

At first I was a bit disappointed. I thought about trying to run to the front, but realized that this just wouldn't work. I found a motor cycle taxi and somehow managed to explain that I wanted to go to the front of the parade route. Soon I was off an adventure, weaving through the city on the back of a motorcycle. After fifteen or twenty minutes, we arrived at a spot near the front of the parade. Despite the fact that the parade route was packed when I finally arrived, I was able to get a great spot by standing on the small grass medium between the lanes of the road. For some reason people were packed alongside the road, but many didn't come out in the middle. The road was closed, but the one downside was you could be trapped there for periods of time while the parade went by. Still, there were lulls when you could cross the road and leave if you so desired.

One great thing about my vantage point the second day was that I was near a turn around point. So the parade went by my on one side on my right and then later on my left from behind. This was nice in that if I missed a shot that I really wanted, I could watch out for them on the way back.

You might notice a lot of white shirts in the pictures. Most of the crowd gathered around to watch wore white shirts.

Along side the roads, some of the people set up little tables with Chinese statues, fruit, and incense. Some of the Ma Song would come over to the table and perform a ritual as they passed. The Ma Song would sometimes hand out small strips of cloth to the crowd to bring boon (good luck). One lady was carrying a black flag with Chinese writing on it that she draped over me, presumably for good luck.

In all I probably took about 700 or 800 pictures of the parade over the course of the two days. Most of them aren't worth publishing, but I have created an album with some of them here.

I've also posted some pictures below. I'll warn you that they might be a bit shocking. I didn't show Nalin or Aleena the photographs, but Jacob thought they were great.



From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival
From Phuket Vegetarian Festival

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