Monday, October 18, 2010
The Vegetarian Festival in Phuket (2010)
Recently it was time for the famous Vegetarian Festival in Phuket Town again.
The Vegetarian Festival has been celebrated in Phuket since 1825 when members of a Chinese travelling opera group, visiting the town’s miners, were all taken sick. However they recovered swiftly when their diet was changed to a vegetarian one to honour the two Chinese Emperor Gods.
The festival is certainly a celebration of face piercing, spiritual possession, firecrackers, fire walking, walking on sharp bladed ladders, hot oil bathing – oh and eating vegetarian food!
We took some of our guests from the hotel (as we did last year) with us to watch the procession through Phuket Town and they all remarked that it was something that you needed to see – “at least once”.
