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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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