Rocket Festival: A Diamond in the Rough

With a population standing around 23,000, Yasothon is by no means a bustling metropolis. On 362 days of the year, it’s a mere thoroughfare town en route from Ubon Ratchathani to Khon Kaen on Thailand’s route 23 highway. The fact that most people haven’t even heard of those two cities should say something about the size of Yasothon itself. It’s a mere blip on the map. Except, that is, during its annual Rocket Festival. On those remaining 3 days of the year, you’d be hard pressed to convince locals and visitors alike that there’s anything outside of this country town.

Boom Bang Fai is a festival held annually in a number of agrarian towns in the central region of the Southeast Asian peninsula (Southern Laos and Eastern Thailand). Local folklore attributes its origin to a time when Praya Than (the god of rain) was angry with mankind and refused to allow rainfall for 7 years straight. The resulting famine and death sparked a war between man and Praya Than, in which rockets were fired into the sky. To make a long story short, Praya Than agreed to allow the rains to continue and told mankind to send rockets to the sky when more was needed.

A pyromaniac’s wet dream, Boom Bang Fai features dozens of teams who parade their homemade rockets (anywhere from 1-8m in length) through town and then send them skyward on the festival’s final day. The rocket launching takes place all day Sunday over Yasothon’s river. The sounds of the rockets up close are deafening and the smoke that pours to the ground makes it look like a certified NASA launch.

The rockets are only half the fun, though. The shamed technicians whose rockets fail to fire are thrown into a mud pit, which quickly escalates into full scale mud wrestling amongst throngs of participants, both willing and unwilling. During the days leading up to the launch, 42 concert-sized stages (I counted) lined the main street, blasting music during all waking hours and playing host to dancing, drinking, and merrymaking. Saturday featured a day-long parade of traditional costumes, dance, eccentricity, and, of course, rockets.

The best part about Boom Bang Fai was its relative obscurity amongst foreigners. Though it wouldn’t seem so to most people back home, Thailand is one of the most touristed countries in the world; one of those ‘no rock unturned’ places. At Songkran in Chiang Mai, for example, there seemed to be at least 1 foreigner for every 5 Thai people. By contrast, out of the thousands of people at Yasothon’s rocket festival, I counted less than 15 foreigners in the whole town. The result was a genuine sense of welcoming from the Yasothon locals, who were clearly beaming with pride that a foreigner would take interest in their most important of events. I was taken in to a number of parties and barbeques and treated like a guest of honor. It was nice to find that for all the popular tourist destinations it has, there are still rocks like this one to be turned over in Thailand.