Thailand: Rookie Devotee Takes a Steel Rod Through Both Cheeks as His Tryout [NSFL]

A young devotee at a Phuket temple gets a metal rod shoved straight through both cheeks before he’s even cleared to join the real parade. Apparently that’s just the audition round.

Video

The setting is a temple courtyard strung with red and gold shrine decorations, a crowd in matching lavender shirts packed in around a handful of plastic chairs. This is the lead-up to Phuket’s Nine Emperor Gods festival (locals call it the Vegetarian Festival), held every October, where the premise is that a god takes over the devotee’s body so he can’t feel pain. A shirtless guy with a chest tattoo and a traditional sash gets held steady by the head and shoulders by two other men, one snapping on medical gloves first, like this is a routine procedure and not something that should involve gloves at all.

Then the rod goes in, cheek to cheek, and just sits there while blood runs down his chin and attendants wipe his mouth with tissue. Half the crowd is filming on phones a foot from his face, and somebody’s even got a proper camera rig out. Eventually they work the rod back out, clean him up, and he’s standing in the crowd again like nothing happened. Either the trance works or the guy’s just built different.

What the Thread Said

Most people flat out didn’t buy it. The thread was full of theories that he’s drugged, that the rod never actually goes all the way through, and a few comparisons to something you’d only see in a hentai manga. Somebody pointed out he’s going to get a nasty mouth ulcer out of this no matter what any god does for him. One guy skipped the theories entirely and just left his whole reaction as “Ah……… FUCK.”

The Nine Emperor Gods Festival: 200 Years of Cheeks on Skewers

Before anyone in the clip gets a spike through the face, they’re prepping for a plague-fighting ritual that’s been running since 1825.

• 1825: Hokkien Chinese tin miners in Phuket started the ritual to fight an unexplained epidemic.
• Mediums called “ma song” go into a trance before the gods pierce their cheeks and tongues.
• The pain is meant to cleanse the sins of others, not just the person getting pierced.
• Malaysia and Singapore run the same cheek-and-spear trick at Thaipusam’s Kavadi Attam, also in a trance.
• India banned the piercing ritual it invented; only Malaysia and Singapore allow it today.

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