PHUKET: Fireworks during the Phuket Vegetarian Festival can be extremely loud and ear plugs are essential, Phuket's Public Health Department is warning in preparation for this year's event from September 27 to October 5.

''We have noise levels as high as 130 decibels,'' said Deputy Phuket Director Dr Wirawat Keytamoch. ''This is well above the 115 decibels that most people can tolerate for 15 minutes.''

He also reported one death among the 74 people who were treated in Phuket's hospitals during the nine-day festival last year. Injuries from fireworks trigger some admissions, along with the self-inflicted wounds of the mah song warriors who impale themselves.

Phuket's Vegetarian Festival is one of the world's most astonishing and exotic events, with daily parades of possessed devotees holding thousands of onlookers spellbound - and often with their hands to their ears.

Adherents dress in white and eschew meat, sex and alcohol for nine days, or as long as they can manage. The ancient Chinese tradition was carried to Phuket more than a century ago and has since disappeared in mainland China, providing Phuket with a unique attraction.

Confronting and complex, the body piercings and the fireworks are at heart about the sacrifices some humans make to carry the burdens of others, and a spirit world beyond that seldom manifests itself anywhere quite like it does on Phuket.

The daily parades of enchanted street warriors, sometimes with large objects impaled through their cheeks or wrapped in barbed wire, leave new visitors gasping. Yet the message is non-violent and gentle as the passing warriors pause to bless people and their food offerings.

For those who can survive the initial shock, the Vegetarian Festival also exposes an eternal mystery: how is it that normal, everyday Phuket people who work in resorts and banks can suddenly behave in such radically different ways for these nine days?

The warriors whipping themselves into trances then being impaled with both traditional and modern objects will be back working as bank clerks and restaurant waitresses as soon as the festival ends. That's Phuket: Often appealing, always remarkable.

This year, Phuket Public Health will be working in advance with officials from all of Phuket's Taoist temples and hospitals to make sure that the piercings are more traditional and less likely to leave gaping wounds that require more than a Band-Aid afterwards.

Other dangerous activities involve fire-walking and razor-ladder climbing.