South Thailand / Hat Yai's festivities
Festivities
Songkran
This best-known Thai festival, celebrated April 13, is the traditional Thai New Year and is marked by religious merit-making, pilgrimages, beauty parades and good-natured water throwing.
Sat Duan Sip
This festival of the tenth lunar month, held in September, is a traditional merit-making occasion for the benefit of dead ancestors when, over a fifteen-day period, food offerings are made to Buddhist monks.
Chak Phra
This festival in October celebrates the end of the three-month Buddhist Rains Retreat and the Buddha’s return to Earth after preaching to his mother in heaven. Customarily, revered Buddha images are placed on carriages and ceremonially paraded around town.
Loi Krathong
During this full moon festival in November people float banana-leaf boats away onto waterways bearing a lighted candle, burning incense, a flower and small coins. The purpose is to float away the previous year’s sins.
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