“The Nine Emperor Gods Festival is a nine-day Taoist celebration beginning on the eve of 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar, which is observed primarily in Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and also the Riau Islands. In Thailand, this festival is called Tesagan Gin Je, the Vegetarian Festival. It is celebrated throughout the entire country, but the festivities are at their height in Phuket, where about 35% of the population is Chinese. It attracts crowds of spectators because of many of the unusual religious rituals that are performed”. – Wikipedia. Photo: A devotee gest pierced at the Bang Neow shrine in Phuket. (Photo by Paula Bronstein)

Schoolchildren perfom during celebrations to mark 35 years of Zimbabwe's Independence at the National sports stadium in Harare, Saturday, April 18, 2015. President Robert Mugabe, 91, the central figure in Zimbabwean politics 35 years after Independence from Britain, has led the country since 1980. (Photo by Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP Photo)

Members of the Jordanian police women's team attend the 7th Annual Warrior Competition at the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center in Amman April 22, 2015. Thirty-eight teams from 18 countries are participating in the competition to test their military skills. (Photo by Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)

In this photo taken on Wednesday, February 17, 2016, a volunteer fighter with the Syrian Government forces sits atop a tank in the province of Raqqa, Syria. In recent weeks, Syrian government forces captured dozens of villages and towns across the country. (Photo by Alexander Kots/Komsomolskaya Pravda via AP Photo)

A homeless street child looks in the window of a car in Jammu, India, Friday, January 6, 2017. Some 800 million people in the country live in poverty, many of them migrating to big cities in search of a livelihood and often ending up on the streets. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)

Ender Moreno looks for gold at La Culebra gold mine in El Callao, Bolivar state, southeastern Venezuela on March 1, 2017. Although life in the mines of eastern Venezuela is hard and dangerous, tens of thousands from all over the country head for the mines daily in overcrowded trucks, pushed by the rise in gold prices and by the severe economic crisis affecting the country, aggravated recently by the drop in oil prices. (Photo by Juan Barreto/AFP Photo)

For her series “Dolce Vita in Hell”, Swiss photojournalist Stéphanie Buret headed to Eritrea and found a country struggling to haul itself out of oppression – but with its art deco buildings still looking stunning. (Photo by Stéphanie Buret/The Guardian)

Just a few hours’ drive from the Belarus capital of Minsk, many villagers still live off the land. Nearly 80% of the country’s 9.5 million citizens live in urban areas, but for the rest, being close to nature can outweigh the hardships of country life. Here: Boys play in the Stviga River on a hot summer day near the village of Pogost, Belarus, August 16, 2017. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)