Bun Bang Fai Lan Festival or Rocket Festival
The convivial festival, indigenous to Isan region is held during on the second week of May on the purpose to create harmony amongst the residents and to appease gods for rains and prosperous food. The residents grouped up in team to build the bamboo rocket, which will be decorated and filled with niter. The shapes of the rocket vary but most of them are made into spraying-water naga. The festival also includes all-night music and dance performances, street parade of the rockets accompanied by music and dance and the launching of the rockets.
The local people dress in colorful traditional costumes and dance to accompany the procession. The highlight of the festival is the launch time. The rockets are fired from their launch platforms one by one. Noisy folk music and cheers can be heard for each liftoff and the rocket that reaches the greatest height is declared the winner.
Thai Health Promotion Foundation and Bun Bangfai
There is also a parade put on by Thai Health Promotion Foundation, together with other official health organization to promote no alcohol and no smoking which seemingly contrasts the rest of the festival
RA Homeland Identity Festival
The Bun Bangfai is recognized as a central feature of Lao cultural heritage. In 2005, Phra Ajarn Chandaphone Mingsisouphanh, deputy abbot of a Lao Temple, stated during a presentation of Bun Bangfai at the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia “This is a historic event that brings us recognition and visibility that we, all Laotians, can be proud of.” (Srisupun, 2007)
Anthropologist Charles Keyes (1998) tells of the exhibit of the Lao-American’s Bun Bangfai at the Burke Museum of National History and Culture, Seattle in which the Lao community wished to exhibit something more than simply nostalgia, a remembrance of life in Laos, and so in 1994 they launched a Bun Bangfai event adapted for the Seattle milieu. Within Thailand, Isan people who have emigrated to Eastern or Central Thailand, conscious of their homeland, still choose to celebrate the festival. The event reflects both traditional beliefs and newly assimilated cultural elements. These examples show how Bun Bangfai is always prominent in Lao consciousness in contexts where they are enacting their ethnic identities. (Srisupun, 2007)
In Isan, Bun Bangfai is a very important occasion for those who have been away from home to go back to their home. It might be a better time than Songkran or the New Year’s festival for people to visit their family. The locals call their children to come and join in parades.
From the Culture of Reducing Risk to the Culture of Making Risk
The idea behind Bun Bangfai originally was to reduce the risk of a bad agricultural season by supplicating the gods. In the meantime however, with improved technology, the ritual has begun producing risks - physical risks - which have to date gone largely unchecked. The physical dangers inherent in the shooting of rockets become palpable every year, as accidents and negligence increase. Amateur rockets are unpredictable in their trajectories, and few if any safety precautions are taken. Wayward rockets pose a hazard to people and property, but few festival participants pay attention to the dangers, nor even take them seriously. (Srisupun, 2007) In every year, we hear news of people or places who were placed in danger from Bangfai shooting.
Locals believe that if a rocket lands on a house or other location, that house will be cursed with bad luck. The household must then perform a rite to ask the local spirits to lift the curse. Shooting rockets also poses a severe risk to airplanes that are taking off or landing. Air traffic controllers in Ubon Ratchathani have asked locals to cooperate by disclosing the exact date, time and place of Bun Bangfai festivals, but such requests have gone largely unheeded.
How can we deal with this? The Rocket festival is the ritual that people ask the rain god to ensure a good rice harvest. But, today, it is the culture of risk. It has changed from the culture that tried to reduce risks [in the term of spirit] to the culture that now takes risks, risking lives, risking properties, and risking spirit.
The one thing that we can feel relieved about is that some places now have insurance. This is the new approach of the globalized world.