Phuket Vegetarian Festival
The world-famous Phuket Vegetarian Festival or the Nine Emperor God's Festival happens once a year, during the ninth lunar month, and is one of the most auspicious events on Phuket Island. takes place in the ninth month of the Lunar calendar, where devotees flock in huge numbers to take part in the religious extravaganza across all Chinese temples.
The festival is intended to be a period of abstinence from meat and other luxuries to gain good luck. The Vegetarian Festival is an internationally known event, and while it also happens modestly in Bangkok around the same dates, it is mostly a Phuket Event.
With a strict vegetarian diet, a street procession, striking visuals of self-mutilation including body piercing and fire-walking, and religious rituals to purify body and mind; Phuket Vegetarian Festival never fails to fascinate with its unique spectacle and appeal that attract visitors from every corner of the world every year.
The most significant festival in Phuketian culture, the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, is celebrated in the ninth Chinese lunar month, near the end of September and the beginning of October. The event that kicks off the annual Phuket Vegetarian Festival is the raising of a bamboo pole in each Chinese shrine across the island. The pole is meant to invite the Nine Emperor Gods down to earth, and while this ceremony is relatively calm and peaceful, mayhem ensues during the week of the Vegetarian Festival. People can expect to see devotees in brightly colored traditional Chinese costumes, a variety of lengthy parades, body piercings and mutilations, the loud sound of fireworks, and of course an ample amount of vegetarian food offerings.
In the days leading up to the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, the island is decorated with yellow Chinese flags.The various Chinese shrines in Phuket prepare for the festival by deep cleaning the shrine, setting up stages, hanging elaborate Chinese-inspired decorations, and parade accessories. Dozens of vegetarian food stalls are also erected and set up to line the streets of Phuket Town.