Crazy Celebration Of Thai Vegetarian Festival

WARNING: GRAPHIC PICTURES.

A BIKE is not the first item you’d think of piercing your body with.

Not the first thing I’d do with a bike. A follower of the Chinese Bang Neow Shrine, with a child’s tricycle through his cheek takes part in a street procession during the Phuket Vegetarian Festival. Picture: Piti A Sahakorn/LightRocket via Getty Images

As these bizarre images show, these religious devotees have all manner of items pierced through their cheeks, from daggers and swords to a bicycle.

In sacred rituals, devotees known as “Mah Song” or “Spirit Horses” work themselves into trances in order to enable them to work the items through their cheeks.

Thailand’s Vegetarian Festival is more than sprouts and tofu — it’s an assault on the senses, and for the most devout, on the body itself.

Then they dance as massive strings of fireworks explode all around them.

Bang, bang. Ouch. A follower of the Chinese Bang Neow Shrine, with guns in his cheeks during the Phuket Vegetarian Festival. Picture: Piti A Sahakorn/LightRocket via Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

The annual festival in Phuket has become a tourist attraction, with several large, noisy processions complete with fireworks, gongs and drums passing through the streets. Many Phuket residents have Chinese ancestors, and devotees to the many Chinese temples on the island parade their shrines’ emperor gods on hand-carried carriages.

Photo/David Longthreat

The Vegetarian Festival begins on the eve of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar and is observed primarily in Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar. It traces its origins to the early 1800s, when a troupe of Chinese actors on tour in Phuket fell ill. It was decided that they should abstain from eating meat and soon all were well again.

The festival and its sacred rituals are believed to bestow good fortune. Devotees observe a strict vegetarian or vegan diet that is believed to cleanse the body and grant merit. It is believed that those who endure piercings experience no pain while in the trance.

Article Source: News Au