The Annual, National Vegetarian Festival is here!
It's happening NOW, from the 26th September until around the 3rd October. But what exactly is it, what does it mean?
Well, here in Chiang Mai, you will not notice much more than jey (vegan) food being sold everywhere. Normal jey restaurants will have later opening hours, a lot more customers and more advertising. This local one has a lot more decoration than usual.
Other restaurants will have a lot more jey options on the menu. Markets have specially included jey stalls which aren't normally there. Some temples even give away jey food for free, like this one does - this temple is situated on the second ring road just before the road passes over the railway bridge in the Nong Pheung/Saraphee area. Get food for free!
7-11 has a whole range of jey products especially for this festivial. Street vendors pop up selling jey food on the side of the road. It's basically the best time of year to be vegan because food is so readily available for us at almost any time of the day. I've also been in Bangkok for the festival, where street stalls selling jey food are open until quite late at night, at all other times of the year, this would be a rare find. However, I haven't yet seen much other forms of celebrations of this event, if you find any - let me know.
In Phuket, the story is quite different. I have not been there, but my friend and fellow vegan John Keeble has been and was able to provide me with the following report which includes the history of how this festival started.
John Keeble on Phuket Vegetarian Festival
"The noise is deafening, the fireworks like gunfire and bombs; they flash through the choking smoke and the young men try to shield themselves from the blast of hot debris. I am in the middle of it: this is a Vegetarian Festival parade through the historic Phuket town.
In Chiang Mai, the festival is quiet – all about eating for tourists and expats but more seriously religious among followers of this blend of Daoism and Buddhism that started to come together in Phuket in the early 19th century and today has a claim on more than a million people. Vegetarianism is the marker for the religion, though it is what they regard as a pure vegetarianism which shuns any meat or fish products and extends it into the 'blood heating' onions, garlic and coriander. The festival, for nine days in the ninth lunar month to honour its nine gods, is very strong in southern Thailand but Phuket is its centre. It was there, according to the stories, that travelling entertainers from southern China arrived to find the tin miners sick with 'jungle fevers' and healed them with a combination of hygiene and religious beliefs and practices. There was no face piercing then and I think this probably came from the Hindu's Thaipusam festival before being extended into the extremes of today.
I was in Phuket to photograph the Vegetarian Festival’s wildest moments. I photograph amid the parade's section where young men carry representations of their gods and everyone, in the parade and watching it alongside, explode fireworks to protect them and their precious burdens. I feel like the parade's priests who stand without flinching except that they don’t get the air crackers and deafening bombs that are exploding around me. The young men heave forward with their precious burdens of Chinese Gods, each one in a throne held aloft on poles carried by eight or more sweating, burned, red-paper debris covered devotees. All around me, they crowd in the narrow street, the smoke still choking, nine Gods in their hand-borne ‘chariots’ and more than 100 devotees whose job is to take everything the watchers can hurl at them because the fireworks frighten off the evil spirits – it is part of the religious ritual and the carriers take their luck with the fire and explosions.
Further down the street, there is another outbreak of cracks and bangs, flashes and debris … the procession, in the narrow, car-lined streets of Phuket Town, carries on moving and someone shoves me out of the way before they go over the top of me too. “Earlier, in the dawn light of the temple, the ma-song – the Entranced Horses – go through self torture to invite the gods to take on the bad things in their lives and the community’s life and offer good for the coming year. Gaping wounds are cut into faces, enough in a car crash to mean an ambulance dash to hospital, but very few flinch. The cheeks are cut, razor style, if the ma-song is to have something flat inserted – say six huge knives – or spiked if the object (say, a gun or pole) is round. In many, spikes are pushed through the tongue and sometimes a hundred pins are pushed through the fleshy bits like arms and ears. Then the ma-song, each one of them, have to walk in the parade over several kilometres through Phuket town, say three or more hours of endurance. I walked it with them and - nearly a thousand photographs later – I was exhausted, scorched, deafened, battered and happy … but I could not even imagine doing it after the trauma of having such appalling wounds inflicted and stopping all along the route to give blessings to the waiting crowds."
It sounds interesting although somewhat barbaric, I think I'll stick with the more peaceful Chiang Mai and enjoy the simple availability of jey food.
Get it while you still can! Although I have also heard it will be happening again from the 24th Octbober to the 2nd November, due to the rare repitition of the ninth lunar month in the calender. Let's hope we'll be as lucky!
