Phuket Vegetarian Festival is a yearly event of Phuket island in Thailand. It is held on the 9th month of the Chinese lunar calendar. On this vegetarian festival, Phuket local residents who have Chinese origin abide by a ten days vegetarian dieting for the merit making and the spiritual purifying purpose. The origin of the event went back for quite a long time. It is believed that the festival was commenced by a wandering opera group from China who were infected with malaria while playing opera on the island. The opera group realized that they had forgotten to pay homage to the Nine Emperor Gods in the first nine days of the month. The group then adopted a vegetarian diet to pay respect to those emperor deities. As a result, the illness afflicting the opera group miraculously vanished. Once the people of Phuket town knew about this ,they adopted the faith and observe the vegetarian dieting enthusiastically. In addition to this, members of the opera group were sent back to China to find out more about how the rites should be properly executed. On their coming back to Phuket, they brought back the holy writings together with sacred name plaques which had the status of gods. The plaques invited the emperor gods to come the island to drive off the evil spirits. As a result, each year the rituals are performed at the commencing on the first eve of the ninth month in the lunar calendar.
During the festival the participants would dress in all white and follow the commitments such as be a vegetarian, perform no sex, no alcohol, behave themselves well. During the festival, pregnant and menstruating women are not allowed to take part in these ceremonies. The rituals are performed at 6 of Chinese shrines in the island. The main shrine known as Jui Tui Shrine is located close to the fresh market in town. The first event is to raise the Lantern Pole which is an act to notify all nine Chinese gods that the vegetarian festival is starting. The most exciting parts of the festival is the gruesome ceremonies held to invoke the nine gods. Those actions include walk on hot fire, body piercing and self mortification where participants would puncture their cheeks with assorted items such as skewers, knives, skewers. Those people think that the Chinese gods will protect them from trauma.
Vegetarian Dishes
The local people usually take their household gods to the temple as they believe that the household gods will benefit from the yearly shot of spiritual. For visitors, in addition to the dramatic eye witness of this astonishing festival, visitors can enjoy an extended range of tasteful vegetarian Thai and Chinese cuisine made available on street across the island. The vegetarian dishes are recognized by the yellow flags with red Thai and Chinese characters. The 2009 festival will start from 18 - 26 October 2009.
History of Phuket Vegetarian Festival
In addition to this amazing festival, there are much more Phuket things to do for visitors.
Martin A Kim is an avid traveler who has visited Phuket for many times.
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