Thailand: Phuket & Vegetarian Festival

This post comes with a warning- it gets a little graphic toward the end.
We spent 3 nights in Phuket on our way to Koh Phi Phi.  We stayed 2 nights on Patong beach, which makes Las Vegas look like preschool (ladyboys and strip clubs are really not our scene), and then headed into Phuket town.  All of the guides and reviews will tell you not to stay in Phuket town b/c the beaches are where it's at, but we found Phuket Town to be a neat little city, with colonial architecture and its own culture instead of being focused solely on tourists.  We also happened to be there during the "Vegetarian Festival," a week-long Chinese festival of purification.  Here are the pics....

This is all we have to post from Patong

Roads on Phuket- we opted for the local bus ($1.50 from town to the beach) rather than driving ourselves here!

Old town Phuket

Love the color of these buildings

Yes, its a Lady Gaga helmet. :)

The food market (taken from the local bus).  About a quarter mile of all the veg-friendly food you could want.

White clothes for the festival- I've never seen so much white!

Snacks- yum yum!

We got these doughnuts outside of the temple.  We had no idea when we sat down but turns out these were free as part of the festival!

Chinese Temple

Children setting off fireworks in the temple.  The fireworks could be heard all day and night, increasing as the festival progressed. 

Part of the ceremony honoring deceased warriors- the man in yellow with the sea urchin lead a procession through the town.

Procession bringing the 9 Vegetarian gods from the local temples to the main temple.  It starts out mild like this....

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Neat costumes but still pretty normal....

Then you see this......

Piercing one's face with various objects (including umbrellas and shovels) as well as ceremonial cutting and self flagellation as part of the festival.  Tony captured these pics during an early morning procession our last day in Phuket.  Amazing to see!