Tan Kuay Salak festival Bangkok

Sweet3Mango decide to get in amongst it at the annual Tan Kuay Salak festival in Bangkok.

Every year the northern Thai community in the Udom Suk area of Bangkok gathers at Wat Wachiratham Sathit Worawihan to celebrate a festival called Tan Kuay Salak. It was a 10 minute Song Taow ride from Udom Suk BTS.

A local informed us that this has been a tradition in Bangkok for almost 50 years and the schedule is well established here. It’s normally celebrated in the 12^th Month of the traditional Lanna.

The Tan Kuay Salak festival has been a traditional fixture on the Northern calendar for many generations. There are many reasons why the festival is held in early October and why it takes the form it does.

 

The date comes before the Awk Phansa festival celebrating the end of Buddhist Lent at a time when all of the monks are all still in the temple. Second, this is the time of year when there is little work to be done in the fields, and when the fruit to be brought for merit-making is ripe and ready to be gathered.

The heart of this merit-making tradition is the desire to make offerings to the monks. The people presenting them do not specify any particular monk as the recipient, but originally it was a tradition to include a palm-leaf note giving the name of the person who presented it and of the person or people for whom it was intended to create Buddhist merit. These might be ancestors or even the donor himself, who would receive the merit after his death.

 

The Tan Kuay Salak festival offers a chance to experience Lanna culture, with northerners congregating for a traditional religious ceremony, but more importantly for us at sweet3mango it was a chance to get off the beating track and mix with the locals, whom I must say were excellent hosts and bring the amazing into Amazing Thailand.