Phuket Trip Day Four Continued!

My last post was the background information about this unique festival, so this post will mainly be pictures and my personal opinions on the festival.  Some of the things that I saw made me nautious, and there was only one thing that I saw that made me turn away because I felt sick.  The only reason I felt sick was because they stopped right beside me to "oil" the knife (I'll show you a picture and explain in further detail). 

 Our day started out by pouring drinks that would eventually be handed out to the people that were taking part of the procession.  We served coke, green pop (not sure what flavor it is, it doesn't really have a flavor as far as I can tell...), orange pop, strawberry fanta, and sprite.  It was a group effort to get all of the cups filled.  Haha. 

 The next task was handing out drinks, which you can see Courtney (one of my exchange student friends from the USA) is doing.  I got to do this too, but I spent more time taking photos, because there were lots of people fighting to hold the trays.  I didn't mind too much because it allowed me to take photos. :)

 The man with the red apron on has "shish-ka-bob" sticks in his mouth.  I'm not sure what they are called, but this was one of the most "popular" things that they stuck in their mouths.  He only has a few in his mouth, but I saw some that had over 20.  It was pretty amazing to think that they stuck this all in their mouth. 

 This is another person with the "shish-ka-bobs" in his mouth, but his have devorations on the end, which weigh more.  Also the sticks in his mouth were thicker, and looked more like blades.  The men that are in white that surround "devotees" are there for medical purposes...and their are a lot of them.

 This particular man has two spikes through his cheeks.  On the end of the spikes, he has two wooden ship models.  The models were pretty cool to look at, but I don't think I will be sticking those spikes in my mouth, it looks extremely painful. 

 The guy that made me feel sick.  Well this was my first "up-close-and-personal" look at what it looks like when you shove these things in your mouth.  They had to sit him down right infront of our stall in order to oil up his knife.  If they don't oil the object that is in your mouth, your cheeks will start to heal over, which the object in your mouth, causing problems later when you try to take them out.  We got to watch them oil the knife, and then wiggle it around for a bit.  It was pretty gross. 

 The first of the firework chairs.  This is one of the chairs that would have fireworks chucked at it.  As you can tell, most of the people are ecently covered, in order to prevent burns caused by the firecrackers.  People would either throw the firecracker from the crowd, and hope that it hits the chair, and not the people, or you could walk up and stick your cracker in the chair, and the people would shake it so it blew up faster. 

 For all you nature lovers, how would you like to stick a few palm leaves in your mouth? There were a few plants that we saw being put in the mouths. 

 Watching the firecrackers go off right outside our stall.  This was extremely loud, and there were a few times where I had to plug my ears because it was so loud.  We were told to wear our sunglasses, because pieces of the firecrackers would fly off and smack us in the face.  The noise was deafening, and a few of the people on exchange had to leave to a different place because it was too loud.

 Normally you would see people using umbrellas to protect from the rain.   This man was using them to be part of his spiritual cleansing.  The umbrella's were pretty :) but having them shoved through my cheecks..no thanks.

 If you weren't going to stick things in your mouth, there were other options that we saw.  Some people would rub their tongue against an axe, esentially "splitting" the tongue (really gross, lots of blood), or they would do what these people would do.  Ever x amount of steps (I didn't count) they would stop walking, kneel down, and smack their back and front with the axe...

 This is just a picture of the firecrackers going off on one of the chairs.  The street was an absolute mess after the procession went through...lots of firecracker debris. 

 This unique fellow has stuck a skewer through his tongue, and has pierced his body in various places.  His arms were all covered in feathers, and they were attached by "threading" them through the skin.  Somewhat like sewing...but with skin.  I'm not sure how to describe what this man had done, but he had it all up and down his arms, face, and back. 

 A guy with a gun through his cheeks. 

 This is the stall that was next to ours.  It was more like a shrine.  The man would pick fruit up off of the table, and give it to one of the people that were surrounding him as a gift.  He had the "skewers" pierced through his skin as well (the man in the picture two up, had the same thing done, just in greater numbers).

 Our Rotary Stall.  We had a lot of fruit that we were offering to the devotees.  The round green fruit that is at the bottom of the picture is called Som-oh, (we call it Pomello), then there was Rambutan (the little red things), pineapples, banana's, oranges, watermelon...lots of fruit.  We didn't actually have that many devotees come to our stall because there were a lot of places that they could have gone. 

At the end of the procession, we burned Chinese money as a thank you to the gods.  So this is me burning the money.  It's not real money though, haha we wouldn't waste that.

There is more to my day, but I will stick it in another post.