Isaan - Northeast Thailand Events

Isaan has the most distinctive festival calendar in Thailand, and several of its events exist nowhere else.

Bun Bang Fai, the Rocket Festival — May

Held across the region as the dry season ends, most famously at Yasothon. Villages build enormous gunpowder rockets from lengths of PVC pipe, some of them several metres long, decorate them elaborately, parade them with music and dancing, and then fire them into the sky to prompt the rain god to send the monsoon. Bets are placed on altitude and duration, losing teams are traditionally thrown into mud, and a great deal of lao khao is drunk. It is loud, genuinely dangerous, and completely unlike anything in the rest of the country.

Candle Festival — July, Ubon Ratchathani

Marking the start of Buddhist Lent, temples commission vast sculptures carved from beeswax — narrative scenes several metres long, worked for months — and parade them through the city on floats. The craftsmanship is extraordinary and the carvers work in public in the weeks beforehand.

Naga fireballs — October, Nong Khai

On the night of the full moon ending Buddhist Lent, reddish glowing balls rise from the Mekong. Local belief attributes them to the naga serpent; explanations range from marsh gas to fraud. Tens of thousands line the riverbank to watch either way.

Elephant Round-up — November, Surin

Hundreds of elephants gather for demonstrations, processions and an enormous buffet laid out in the street, reflecting the Kuy people’s elephant-keeping tradition. Worth being aware that the welfare questions around elephant events apply here too.

Phanom Rung solar alignment — April and September

On a few mornings each year the rising sun shines straight through all fifteen doorways of the sanctuary, and a festival marks it.