The kingdom’s calendar of annual events brims with celebrations, whether seasonal or sacred, rural or urban, traditional or up to the minute. These occasions provide fun-loving Thais, and visitors to Thailand, with plenty of opportunities for sanuk — the Thai sensibility for infusing activities with glee.

In a land of cultural fusion, Thais can’t resist marking foreign festivals and creating new feasts of arts and entertainment. But it’s the traditional festivals that best express Thailand’s diverse character and make it such a fascinating place to visit.

Traditional festivals arise from different cultural aspects, such as royal pageantry, Buddhist observance, merit making, offerings to deities and spirits, the various stages in the agricultural cycle or auspicious occasions to mark life’s rites of passage.

The timing of various celebrations were also dictated by practical considerations such as recruiting help from neighbours or the community during the planting and harvest season. Gaps between the various phases such as ploughing, sowing, re-planting and harvest freed up time for celebration, which involves painstaking craftsmanship, costume, offerings and speciality food.

Many festivals occur for a serious or sacred purpose. However, solemn rites are balanced with irrepressible fun. This ranges from feasting and fairs to contests and performance. These two strands of the Siamese character — sanuk and sa-ngop (devout serenity) — blend in uniquely enjoyable ways throughout the festive calendar.

You don’t need to be Buddhist to witness rituals, which are multi-sensory and interactive, imbued with candlelight and incense, chanting and bells, lotus buds and gold leaf. Monks walk among the congregation, scattering drops of sacral water with a sheaf of mayom twigs. Around the wrists of those present, monks or village elders tie white cotton strings as a blessing. At Loi Krathong, anyone can buy and launch their own krathong (a floral raft) — or khome loi (flaming paper lantern) — and as the offering floats away on the water or in the breeze, make a wish.

Cavalcades Processions often form the main spectacle of a Thai festival. Costumed revellers escort offerings, Buddha images or people dressed as sacred or historical figures in at least one parade, sometimes several. Elaborate motorised or hand-drawn floats express variations on the festive theme, ornately crafted by local groups or nearby villages. Marching bands, musicians and phallanxes of dancers fill the entourage, along with witty characters amusing the onlookers.

Competitive Fun
Competition infuses many festivals. Community VIPs award prizes for the top floats, best costumes, fastest racing boats, furthest reaching rockets, prettiest beauty queens and — in the many orchard harvest festivals — the most impressive fruit.

Temple Fairs
The playfulness often extends into the night at a ngan wat — a fair held within a temple (wat) compound or on an open civic ground. At fairground rides and sideshows, people try to win prizes. Witness matches of muay Thai boxing, singing contests and many rounds of beauty pageants.

Feasting & Shopping
Throughout the fair, stalls sell local crafts, textiles, consumer goods, herbal products, clothing and, most importantly, food. Sampling festive dishes and regional streetfood is a major draw for Thai tourists. Many stock up on speciality foods to take home as souvenir gifts.

Food stalls also line parade routes. Sometimes, villagers set up special tables for serving huge quantities of free food made by volunteers for participants and visitors to consume.

	In Bangkok and the central plains, you may see formal court dramas like khon, lakhon or nang yai (large shadow puppets), as well as retro popular culture, including likae (folk opera), lamtad (witty rural rap) or luuk thung (country music).
	Northern Thailand is famous for graceful fon dances, Lanna music ensembles, and acrobatic sword wielding and pounding of sabatchai victory drums. These often take the form of the show at a khantoke, a set dinner of Lanna dishes served on a pedestal tray.
	The equivalent Isaan dinner is the palaeng feast of northeastern dishes. Festive entertainment would include mor lam, serng and ponglang folk performances, and the plaintive sounds of traditional Isaan musical instruments like the pin, kaen, wote and khlong yao long drum. Any festival in Isaan would have huge stages of mor lam with plumed backing dancers.
	The South is a 'land of three cultures', rich with Thai, Islamic and Chinese influences. Festivities can include such performances as Nang Talung (shadow puppets), Likay Hulu (a kind of folk rap), dances such as Rong-ngeng, Kari Kipas and Manohra (which stylises bird movements), or the Bunga Sireh, a cultural procession of elaborate Southern-style floral decorations crafted from 'sireh' (betel leaves). Throughout the country, fireworks often round off the revelry. All the while, an impromptu sense of creativity make for unexpected moments.
	Songkran – New Beginnings Every country marks the new year in a way that speaks volumes about their culture. Given the kingdom’s cultural diversity, Thailand sees in several new years every year, most obviously the Thai, Chinese and international new years. However, Songkran – the grand celebrations to mark the Thai New Year — is the ultimate celebratory event. Held from 12 to 15 April — and up to ten days in the north — Songkran is the biggest and longest public holiday, followed a week later by the ethnic Mon New Year. As the official Thai calendar now follows the international one, like everyone else Thais also ring in the global Hogmanay of December 31, while many mark the Chinese lunar new year. This embrace of so many cultures keeps Thai events exuberant. Thais still observe the gentler rites from which Songkran developed, pouring sacral, petal-strewn water over Buddha images and elders’ hands in tribute. Formalities over, young Thais then indulge in all-out, good natured water splashing of family and friends, neighbours and strangers. The dousing continues after dark in special Songkran zones for tourists. It’s not just ritual or fun; the spraying helps keep people cool. After all, Songkran happens at the hottest, driest time, as barren as the temperate winter — hence the impulse for renewal.

	Rain-making Rockets Rain is so vital to villagers across Isaan that, in May and June, they shoot home-made rockets (bang fai) to propitiate the rain deity, Phaya Than. The most famous Boon Bang Fai Festival rocks the sky in Yasothon. Villagers craft enormous rockets that they carry on elaborate floats to the launch site after late-night festivities amid non-stop morlam folk music and dancing.
	High Spirits Another boisterous Isaan festival, Phi Ta Khon, is unique to the Dan Sai district in Loei Province and reflects Isaan beliefs in ghosts and spirits. Held in late June/early July, it involves shamanic rites and enacts an episode in the Lord Buddha’s penultimate incarnation as Prince Vessandorn, when even the spirits celebrated his return. In the vibrant processions and throughout Dansai, youngsters coat themselves in soot or mud, or dress as ghosts. With shaggy costumes, phallic swords and masks creatively sculpted from wood and rice steamers, they infuse the event with high-jinks, humour and energy.

Buddhist Devotion
Lunar Buddhist holidays structure much of the festive calendar. Phi Ta Khon is part of a particularly grand version of folk merit-making festivals known as boon luang.

Khao Phansa marks the Buddhist Lent, the three-month rainy season retreat during which monks remain confined to their temples. The practice was adopted to prevent monks from trampling on sprouting rice.

Traditionally, most Thai men enter the Buddhist monkhood for at least a short time. Ordinations mix solemn initiation with joyous cavalcades of dancing relatives, mobile musicians, festive food and crowds of well-wishers.

	The most committed novices ordain for the rains retreat, so Khao Phansa witnesses many ordination processions. At this time, Thais donate candles to symbolise monastic study and enlightenment. These can be intricately carved, and the Ubon Ratchathani Wax Candle Procession features decorative floats carved from yellow wax in fantastical forms.
	The most colourful mass-ordinations occur in April, at Poi Sang Long in Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai. Dozens of ethnic Thai Yai (Shan) youths don elaborate costumes and make-up to accentuate the imminent austerity of the saffron robe and shaven head.
Celebrating the End of Buddhist Lent When waterways run high towards the end of the rainy season in September and October, the focus is on riverine activities such as traditional long-boat races, water-borne processions to mark Ok Phansaa, the end of Buddhist Lent, and Thawt Kathin, the presentation of monks’ robes as Buddhist merit-making offerings which continues until November.
	In northern Isaan, the Naga Fireballs natural phenomenon draws thousands to carnivals at Mekong River viewpoints near Nong Khai; the Illuminated Boat Procession wows crowds downstream at Nakhon Phanom; and the Wax Castle Procession excites nearby Sakhon Nakhon. Down south, Phattalung holds the Phon Lak Phra Festival, Phon Drum-Beating Contest and Chak Phra Buddha Image Procession. Near Bangkok in Samut Prakarn, devotees toss thousands of lotus buds onto a Buddha as it passes by boat in the Rap Bua waterborne cortège.
	Through September and October, towns around the kingdom, such as Phichit, Phitsanuloke, Ayutthaya and Chumphon, host traditional long-boat races. In these feisty tournaments, bunting garlands the longboat prows, oarsmen don uniforms and revellers cheer from riverbank fairgrounds.
	Loi Krathong — Festival of Lights On the full moon each November, Thais flock to brimming rivers and canals to float exquisitely decorated rafts called krathong to thank Mae Nam Kongka (Mother Ganges) for their use of water. The whole country marks Loi Krathong, but the most enchanting locations are the World Heritage Site of Sukhothai and Bangkok’s Lumpini Park and riverfront promenades. In regional variations, people in Tak province make krathongs of coconut shell, while in Chiang Mai, northerners float paper lanterns into the sky in an equivalent festival called Yipeng.

Around this gentle spectacle, fireworks and firecrackers explode, towns host temple fairs and Nang Noppamas beauty pageants in honour of the legendary creator of Loi Krathong.

Historical Spectacles
Communities draw upon their local culture and crafts for each festival. These may also showcase regional history through son et lumière productions with pyrotechnics and re-enactments by hundreds of performers.

Good times to sample the graceful Lanna heritage are the Chiang Mai Flower Festival in February, the early April kaad mua (traditional market) leading up to Songkran, and at Yipeng.

Isaan history gets recounted at Phimai Festival near Khorat in November and at Khao Phanom Rung Festival at Buriram in April. At the spring equinox, dawn’s rays shine in a single shaft through all 15 doors of the Phanom Rung sanctuary, which was built a thousand years ago during the Khmer empire. To mark this astronomical phenomenon, local residents make a pilgrimage to this ‘home of the gods’ to express thankfulness by entertaining the gods.

For Central region pageantry, masses of costumed performers re-enact scenes at the King Narai Fair in Lopburi and the Ayutthaya World Heritage & Red Cross Fair. With the shows come a plethora of markets, food stalls, craft demonstrations and the kinds of unexpected quirks that make Thailand so engaging.

JOINING IN
The outgoing quality of Thai celebrations make them unusually open to visitors. The Thai welcome is famously genteel, but when the Siamese are having a spree, tourists get invited to join.

Thai festivals are interactive. Processions of villagers encourage bystanders to join in an improvised ram wong (circle dance). Rituals may be open to outsiders. Merrymakers may cajole visitors into joining their table for food and toasts. You might see behind the scenes as locals prepare. Given this hot climate, much happens in early morning, late afternoon or at night. Markets and fairs fill the hours in between. Be prepared to expend energy over an intensive two or three days.

Festival-going is very informal, though observing Thai mores — accepting hospitality, dressing politely, respecting seniors — ensures a warm reception. Combining sanuk with sa-ngob applies just as much to guests as hosts. Many festivals have a sacred reason, and maximising fun is part of paying homage and offering thanks. So it matters very much to Thais that everyone has a great time.