Ubon Ratchathani Candle Festival [Joshua Burke]

This weekend we decided to go to Ubon to go see a candle festival that was going on there. Ubon Ratchathani is a city that is in NE Thailand and is 1400 km (875 miles) from Phuket. We were going to go by plane but by the time we were ready to book the flight there, the plane was already filled up. The candle festival only lasted for two days, Friday and Saturday, so we decided to go by car. The trip took 25 hours in the car and I could barely sleep for most of the trip. 

We did stop at a couple locations on the way and one stop was a Buddhist park. It had tons of temples and Buddhas of all sizes. I learned there that the reclining Buddha is the symbol of Tuesday. My favorite stop however was the Surin Project. The Surin Project is a project to help better the living conditions of the elephants in captivity. There, I got to ride on elephants, which is always a ton of fun. 

When we finally arrived at Ubon we went to our hotel room, and I immediately took a shower. Our room was pretty nice, and had tons of room. When we were all settled we had a delicious dinner buffet. The food was Essan food, which is ultra spicy. I probably threw down about 10 full glasses of water.  

The next morning we had a breakfast buffet before heading off to the hotel’s swimming pool to take a swim. Mom also took a well-needed sauna and had a massage. We wanted to see the festival tonight, so we arranged for a cab to pick us up at the hotel. It was getting dark by the time we arrived by cab. The festival was amazing and stalls were selling all kinds of items from street food to clothes. Jacob, James, and I also went on a Ferris wheel. We defiantly got our money’s worth because we went around about 15 times, non-stop! Seeing the people on the stands holding the candles as the floats went by was pretty cool.

Cooked bugs for sale.

Bird puppets that James and Jacob bought. 

The candles

On the ferris wheel. 

We woke up early to go see the parade at the candle festival. To our luck we found seats high up in the stands along the road. The floats were amazing, Buddhist carvings made out of wax that were 5 meters (15 feet) high went along. The parade also included finger dancing and musicians. It was a lot of fun. The heat though was immense and it felt like I was going to melt. After the parade we looked at some more stalls before leaving.

Some finger dancers.

And some more finger dancers. 

Having some fun. 

My favorite Muai Thai trainer Lambang, left Phuket to go to Ubon, his home, to spend some time with his family before going to Australia. We were able to track the gym that he was working at and I got to train with him one more time. I had a good workout and learned some new moves. Special thanks to Mom and Dad for setting that up.

Training with Lambang at the gym. 

That’s it for now

Joshua