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Rambutan Fair
The annual August fair celebrates the delicious
fruit, first planted in Surat Thani during 1926.
Highlights include floats adorned with rambutans
and other fruits, exhibitions of local products
and ornamental plants, and demonstrations by specially
trained monkeys who harvest coconuts.
Chak Phra Festival
Surat Thani celebrates the official end of the
annual 3-month Buddhist Rains Retreat (Ok Phansa)
in mid-October with the Chak Phra Festival (literally
'the procession of hauling the Buddha image’).
The tradition stems from the belief that the Buddha
ascended to Heaven during Phansa to preach to
his mother. The festival marks the Buddha's return
to Earth, and is an occasion for religious merit-making
and general celebrations. Local people organise
dazzling land and waterborne processions of revered
Buddha images (to symbolise the Buddha's return
to Earth) and boat races on the Tapi River where
long boats, manned by up to 50 oarsmen, are ebulliently
raced. Religious devotion, spectacle and merriment
combine to make Surat Thani's Chak Phra Festival
a memorable annual event.
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Surat
Thani
