The Lotus Throwing Festival in Bang Phli.
Rub Bua (also Rap Bua) is the beautiful Lotus Flower Receiving Festival which takes place at Bang Phli in Samut Prakan, Thailand.
This lovely old tradition has been handed down through the generations. Local people line the banks of the Klong Samrong river and throw lotus flowers onto a BOAT which ceremoniously carries a statue of the revered Buddha. This image is called Luang Poh To and is kept at Wat Bang Phli Yai temple where the journey starts every year.
The Lotus Festival is also a kind of Valentine’s Day in Thailand. The hundreds of young men and women line the river banks in anticipation of receiving one of the blossoming lotus flowers given by an admirer.
The festival is held every year one day before the end of the Buddhist Rain Retreat (otherwise known as the Buddhist Lent). This is on the morning of the fourteenth (or fifteeenth) day of the waxing moon in the eleventh lunar month (usually sometime in October). It is also the day before OK Phansa which is on the full moon.