Thailand Festivals

Songkran Festival The Best Thai Festival

The most well known of all Thai festivals, Songkran is for those who love a good water fight. It’s the official Thai New Year landing on April 13th each year and lasting around 2 to 3 days. During the festival, the streets fill up with people looking to soak and get soaked with super-soakers in hand! Water is used as a symbol of cleansing, which is exactly what the Thai want to do to start the New
Year.

Phuket Vegetarian Festival

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival is a colorful event held over a nine-day period in October, celebrating the Chinese community's belief that abstinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar will help them obtain good health and peace of mind.

One of the most exciting aspects of the festival are the various, (and sometimes gruesome) ceremonies which are held to invoke the gods. Firewalking, body piercing and other acts of self mortification undertaken by participants acting as mediums of the gods, have become more spectacular and daring as each year goes by.

Men and women puncture their cheeks with various items including knives, skewers and other household items. It is believed that the Chinese gods will protect such persons from harm, and little blood or scarring results from such mutilation acts.

This is definitely not recommended for the faint hearted to witness.

In 2011 some 74 people were injured with one death reported. Injuries are usually sustained from the indiscriminate use of firecrackers so beware of this pitfall and stay well away from this deafening and sometimes frightening aspect of the Vegetarian Festival.