No one is quite sure about the origins of the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, but historians reckon it was started by the Chinese community about 150 years ago. One matter is beyond doubt it is one of the most spectacular of all the vegetarian festivals held in Thailand.
The nine-day festival runs from 17 to 26 October and its roots are firmly embedded in the Chinese community's belief that abstinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar is good for body and soul. 
Apart from adhering to a strict vegetarian, diet those who join the festival make offerings to the Nine Emperor Gods to to secure a year of health.
Always held on the first days of the ninth Chinese lunar month, and for nine days it exerts a serious commitment from those who participate.

They use the festival to gain cleanliness of the body through a vegetarian diet, dressing in white and abstaining from all pleasures including the consumption of alcohol and sex.

Crowds are attracted to the Phuket festival because it continues to display traditional practices that have largely disappeared in cities where the Chinese communities embrace a vegetarian diet, but little else of the ancient customs.

In Phuket town, visitors watch in awe at fire walking, body piercing and other acts of self mortification, some of the feats quite scary.

Men and women puncture their cheeks with various sharp objects, believing the Chinese gods will protect them from harm. This festival is not for the feint hearted.

 
There are six Chinese temples in Phuket town, but the main site is the Jui Tui Shrine, not far from the fresh food market. The traditional raising of a 10-metre high lantern pole signals the start of the festival. Celebrants believe that the Hindu god, Shiva, descends bringing spiritual power to the venue.

 
Apart from the spectacular and sometimes shocking displays of self mortification, there are handy escape routes to the roadside food stalls laden with an astonishing variety of vegetarian dishes.
At a glance they look like chicken or red meat dishes, such is the art of vegetarian cooking these days.  Well worth a visit while on holiday in Phuket.