Phuket Vegetarian Festival

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Phuket Vegetarian Festival

On a prior scooter expedition, where I had been “exploring Phuket Town,” which could be roughly translated into “getting lost in Phuket Town,” I came across crowds all dressed in white milling about under banners that read “Phuket Vegetarian Festival.” Although there was initially a slight pang of excitement at my unwittingly landing up in the midst of a cultural event, I must admit that my only thoughts at the time were concerning the mediocrity of such a celebration. That’s not to say that I hold a grudge against those who were blessed with canines but choose not to use them, but the scale of the preparations seemed disproportionate to the number of Thai people I would expect to practise Vegetarianism. This mindset may be completely unfair, I realise, but being from a country where the “Biltong Belt” is very real and the occasions are so unfathomably rare where a meal is not based around a cut of animal flesh, be it wild beast or domestic livestock, I told myself that I could be yielded a little slack.

After dropping this into conversation with the all knowing Yoga, knife fighting, stick fighting, Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu practising Pom named Simon the next day, I was vindicated for my perception that most of the white clad revellers blocking the streets of Phuket Town that Sunday would not say "No" to the odd Big Mac. As it turns out, the Phuket Vegetarian Festival is in fact a period of purification where regular meat chewers give their canines a ten day break, and not a festival celebrating Vegetarianism itself. This is an excerpt from an internet site which wraps it up rather succinctly:

“The Phuket Vegetarian Festival is an annual event held during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar. It is believed that the vegetarian festival and its accompanying sacred rituals bestow good fortune upon those who religiously observe this rite. During this time, local residents of Chinese ancestry strictly observe a 10-day vegetarian or vegan diet for the purposes of spiritual cleansing and merit-making. 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".”

What the quote fails to mention, however, is that the “Ma Song” also parade through the vegetarian food lined streets with a variety of sharp or tubular implements and or instruments pierced through their ears and or lips and or tongues and or cheeks.

Standing on the side of one of these streets bright and early on Friday 23rd October, I was given a slightly closer than expected view of the pierced procession. A group of the camp’s students and instructors who had crammed into a minibus with the express purpose of opening our minds to the ancient spiritual practices stood like a pod of seals that had sauntered into a beach ball shop. Even though the procession passed us in single file in one direction down one street, I honestly did not know where to look. I was hardly finished coming to terms with the fact that a young man had a shovel through his cheek, when another much older man followed him with a Samurai sword, and then a younger man with a Desert Eagle hand canon through each cheek.

After a short while the giddiness that comes with witnessing something so amazing and unusual began to wear off and, as I looked around at the crowds of bowed heads, hands pressed together in front of their faces, my mind started to accept and appreciate the gravity of the rituals. I began to realise the intension of the self-mutilation as a sacrifice to rid the community of evil for the prosperity of the people. What struck me was the openness of everything. Anyone was free to walk up and down the streets, taking pictures, crossing over, crossing back. People made space. People moved along. People filled space. The only time anyone was politely repositioned was on the occasion that a particularly wide cheek-load needed to be steered through the flowing and ebbing tide of witnesses.

As my shock turned into wander, a friend and my curiosity grew and we walked a little against the flow in order that we might discover the source. We arrived at the ornate gate of a small urban temple complex where the "Ma Song" were coming out. Ryan asked a Thai bystander if we could enter, expecting a stern shake of the head and an incomprehensible reprimand. What we received instead was a polite affirmation and a gentle hand gesture showing the way. We walked into the courtyard of the complex where groups seemed to congregate around specific areas. In complete awe, shuffling between tourists and Monks we split up to explore the grounds, the staging area for one of the most incredible sights I have been fortunate enough to witness first hand.

I stood at the entrance of a small temple, where one by one, adrenaline crazed men entered, leaping from foot to foot with arms flailing about their heads like marauding monkeys. I looked in as the men slammed their hands down on the altar again and again causing a permanent cloud of incense to swirl and puff around them. I watched them breathe in the spirits as a few cleric-like individuals attending the altar adorned the now possessed with bright and intricate aprons and sashes.

I moved hurriedly out of the way of a now colourfully dressed man as he marched purposefully out of the temple, his head shaking slightly but vigorously from side to side, his completely still, expressionless, staring eyes seeming to hover in what was now only open space inside his vibrating head. I followed this man as he calmly sat in a plastic chair in the courtyard of the temple. I watched as another man gripped the sitting man’s cheek, two fingers through the open mouth and a thumb on the outside. I watched as the sharp point of a foot long silver stake was put to the skin of the sitting man’s cheek and slowly and forcefully pushed through, tearing the flesh as it went, so that it eventually jutted out of his mouth as if he were trying to swallow it. I then witnessed as the silver stake was gently slid out and the chosen implement to be put on display was slid in to replace it. I watched this all, noticing most of all that the seated man, his body now awash with ancient Chinese spirits, impossibly, did not even flinch.

Out in the street again I managed to find Ryan, who I was looking to share a few thoughts with. Immediately I knew that he had experienced what I had because his mouth was open and his head was shaking, much like mine. Speaking was not necessary to express the mutual amazement we felt. This was incredibly fortunate as speech, at that point, was beyond my capability.

We moved in silence, drifting with the current of the white river until we were caught in the eddy of a corner a little way up the street. The sun had climbed high into the sky now casting its own spell over Phuket Town. The sharp edges of buildings and pavements appeared more rounded, the lines between all the colours in view had become blurred, and crowds seem to blend into a single docile animal. My sense of reality, now a little different to what it had been an hour before, slowly began to take hold of my consciousness through the haze around me.

All of a sudden a sharp crack, like a rifle shot, rang out, accelerating my return to alertness. The rifle seemed to be followed by an Uzi, and then an AK47, and then a duet involving the R1 and M16 fully automatic assault rifles. The sound was deafening, and unrelenting. After apprehensively looking out from behind the scooter that I had chosen (poorly) as my cover, relief followed the realisation that the apparent gunslingers’ get together turned out to be the largest collective lighting up of Tom Thumbs my ear drums had ever been bombarded by. The procession had come full circle and was making its way back to the temple. The custom, as I quickly learned, was to chase away the bad spirits with constant and loud noise, and what better way than to ignite several tonnes of explosive powder packed into hundreds of thousands of little red firecrackers. Perhaps I exaggerate, but the fact that, by the end of a half hour artillery bombardment that I watched, where individuals from ten years old to one hundred and ten years old hurled books of firecrackers into a procession, leaving the black tar surface coated with a deep maroon of spent Tom Thumb wrappers, I don’t think I am too far off.

As my shock again turned to wander, and Ryan and my curiosity again grew, we returned to the temple courtyard in order to try and discover if we would be allowed to witness the closing of the circle. We found the courtyard much in the same state, but with everything seeming to be occurring in reverse.

I watched as the same men who had sat on the plastic chairs in the temple courtyard hours before, resumed, in turns, the same positions on the same plastic chairs. I watched as the same silver stake wielding surgeons reversed the surgeries that they had performed those hours before. I watched as the colourful men, the burdens now lifted from their ears and or lips and or tongues and or cheeks, made their way back to the same temple from whence they had emerged those hours before. I watched as the men took turns to approach the altar and release the spirits that they had taken inside them those hours before. I then witnessed as the “Ma Song” fell back into the arms of the cleric-like attendants who lowered them into chairs and onto benches in and around the temple in order that they recover their strength to rise once again as ordinary men; ordinary men with bewildered faces beset with extraordinary wounds.

The minibus back to camp was mostly quiet, but for the odd disbelieving "did you see" banter being flung sporadically around the confined space - evidence I believe that I wasn't the only one so affected by the experience. Looking back at the photographs, I still find myself awe struck, and am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to witness and even be a tiny part of the incredible Phuket Vegetarian Festival.

To see the pictures for yourself, if you are not too squeemish, please follow the following link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26196400@N07/

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