Every year communities of Overseas Chinese across Southeast Asia unite in honouring the Daoist ‘Nine Emperor Gods', and nowhere is this celebrated more enthusastically than on the southern Thai island of Phuket where an estimated 35 percent of the population are of ethnic Chinese origin. Known locally as the 'Phuket Vegetarian Festival', it falls in late September or early October, and is marked by nine days of ritual observance and extraordinary acts of bloody self-mortification. In an explosion of smoke and firecrackers, mediums known as ma song speak with the voices of Daoist gods while entranced devotees slash themselves with swords and pierce their bodies with sharp objects of every kind.

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