More on the "piercing" Vegetarian Festival
The epicenter for the Vegetarian Festival of Southern Thailand is 20 minutes away from here in the town of Takua Paa. It is a festival brought over from China by tin miners. As the story goes, a terrible illness broke out in the worker's camp, and the miners felt it was because they had failed to celebrate the festival since their migration from China to Thailand, and the spirits were angry. Thus began this annual festival. Every year the spirits, 10 Buddhist kings that reached Nirvana and who want to return to bless the people, choose people they will enter and use to bless everyone. Those chosen go into a trance-like state and get into a line at a peircing station where skewers will be thrust into their cheeks and sometimes into their forearms or other parts of their body. Then they go around the town in groups to tables set with tea and fruits by those households that want to get blessed. There is a lot more detail to it than this, of course, but this is probably plenty f...
