Thais enjoy special occasions and festivals with passion, celebrating many traditional holidays with unique costumes, ceremonies and most of all a whole lot of fun, or as the locals say "sanuk". Being steeped in a deep sense of history and tradition and often marking religious rites or seasonal changes, many of these yearly events follow the lunar calendar.
 
Local festivals are full of terrific colour and mesmerising theatre, making them memorable events for the whole family to join with equal enthusiasm. Thai lunar New Year or Songkran is the country's largest and certainly wettest public holiday, with elaborate town processions, pageants and a nationwide water fight, a purification ritual undertaken in the best possible humour. Originally a Buddhist event, Songkran also places great emphasis on family values with respects paid to elders.
Held on the night of a full moon, the beautiful water festival of Loi Krathong is a spectacular visual treat tailor made for people of all ages. In the night, friends and families honour water spirits by gathering beside waterways and floating pretty candlelit banana leave baskets, while a blitz of fireworks illuminate the sky up above. In recent years, Thais have also come to
 
readily embrace major international celebrations, entering into the spirit of Christmas, New Year, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day, with unbridled zest. No matter what time of the year you plan to arrive, Thailand will give the whole family cause to celebrate.