Phuket Vegetarian Festival begins

The island of Phuket becomes a sea of white for ten days during the month of October as local inhabitants celebrate the yearly Phuket Vegetarian Festival.

For the ten days of the festival, local shops are full of white clothes and the streets are full of food stalls all selling vegetarian food. Shrines, restaurants and street corners are full of the smell of cooking vegetables.

The white clothes are intended to reflect the purity of people’s mind and body during the period where practitioners abstain from the consumption of meat.

Every year the dates of the festival change, as it is held in the ninth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. This year it will last from October 11th to 19th.

Every morning shrines around the city will perform street processions illustrating their devotion. Most processions begin around 07:00 and occur in Phuket City and in the older parts of town. The first procession is scheduled for October 13th and the final procession is on the 19th.

Religious observers of the sacred rites of the festival are said to gain good fortune. The vegetarian or vegan diet is supposed to cleanse the spirit and gain people merit.

In addition to the devotional processions and sacred rituals which are performed each year in Chinese shrines around the city, there are also aesthetic displays in the shrines as well. Devotees known as “Ma Song� go into a trance and perform acts such as walking barefoot over coals or climbing bladed ladders.

This year’s festival will be one to remember as it occurs in the same year as the 80th birthday of His Majesty the King.