Phuket Vegetarian Festival

This festival is an annual event held during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, which normally falls in late September or early October. Though the origins of the festival are unclear, it celebrates the Chinese community’s belief that a strict diet of ‘vegetables only’ will purify mind and body and constitute merit-making.

Sacred rituals are performed at all Chinese temples in Phuket. The processions from each temple show spectacles of strict vegetarians, known as devotees, ostensibly possessed by