Hundreds of Thai men with swords, spears, metal tubes and various sharp objects pierced through their cheeks and other body parts took to the streets to celebrate their annual vegetarian festival.
Please, scroll down for photos. Warning: graphic content!
The Vegetarian Festival is a nine-day period in October that celebrates the abstinence from meat during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar.
During this period eating meat, drinking alcohol and having sex are thought to be vices and pollutants of the body and mind to be cut out entirely by the truly devoted.
It is celebrated throughout the entire country, but the festivities are at their height in Phuket, where about 35% of the population is Thai Chinese.
It attracts crowds of spectators to look at the devotees who engage in extreme acts of self-mutilation. They believe that it will help them obtain good health, peace of mind and purify their souls.
In accordance with the traditions, many religious devotees perform ritualized mutilation upon themselves and one another while under a trance-like state.
This is done without anesthetic, always inside or near the temples surrounded by other devotees with only iodine, petroleum jelly and surgical gloves as precautionary measures.
Luckily, few people ever need to have prolonged medical treatment, and although in the weeks after the festival many people will be seen covered in bandages, scarring is uncommon, stitching is rare.
Return to daily activity for the devotees occurs shortly after the completion of the ritual, frequently before the festival ends unless performed on the last days, much sooner than before the bandages themselves are removed.
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