Boun Bang Fai — Feast of Rockets
Rockets and Rain Festival · Yasothon, Thailand
The festival
On the eve of the rainy season, Lao and isan villages in the Mekong Basin are firing rockets towards the sky to wake up Phaya Thaen, the king of heaven, and demand rain from rice fields. Boun Bang Fai ("Bamboo Rocket Festival") is located in Yasothon, northeastern Thailand, where the Tourist Office has been supporting the festival since 1974.
On Fridays, the festivities and singing competitions are opened; on Saturdays, decorated rockets — bamboo tubes loaded with 20 to 25 kg of powder, engraved and capped with golden nagas — are paraded in dance procession to Phaya Thaen Park; on Sundays, they are thrown one after the other from high bamboo towers, judged on altitude and flight time. The crew of a missed rocket traditionally ends in mud, under the laughter.
The festival, also celebrated in Laos, combines Buddhist merit, fertility rite and village carnival.
Good to know
Yasothon 2026: May 8–10 (released on May 9, launches on May 10), according to the program taken from the Thailand Tourist Office; the party usually falls on the second weekend of May, with village variations all month round on both sides of the Mekong.