Phuket Vegetarian Festival 2012 | Phuket, Thailand, Krabi, Bangkok, Chiang Mai

Travel News Update!

Oct 15-23, 2012

VENUE: PHUKET TOWN & VARIOUS LOCATIONS IN THAILAND INCLUDING TRANG, KRABI, BANGKOK, CHIANG MAI

This is a colourful event celebrated by the Chinese community and held over nine days in October during the ninth Lunar month of the Chinese calendar. Celebrants pray to the Nine Emperor Gods during the nine days of the festival. They also adhere to a strict vegetarian diet, abstaining from meat and various stimulants to achieve purification of the mind and body and, at the same time, be in good health. The festival also honours the gods, as well as expresses the people's happiness at surviving what was, in the 19th century, a fatal illness.

Sacred rituals are performed at various Chinese shrines and temples and aesthetic displays such as walking barefooted over hot coals and ascending ladders with bladed rungs are performed by entranced devotees known as "Ma Song".