• That Luang Festival and Trade Fair in Vientiane Capital

    Boun Pha That Luang is the most meaningful festival in Vientiane Capital as well as in the Lao PDR. It is held over three to seven days during the full moon of the twenty-fifth lunar month (November, but sometimes it is at the end of October). The festival starts with a colorful candlelight wax castle […]

  • Lao National Day

    This celebrates the 1975 victory of the proletariat over the monarchy with parades, speeches, etc. Lao national and communist hammer and sickle flags are flown all over the country. Celebration is mandatory, hence poorer communities postpone some of the traditional Ok Phansa activities usually practiced roughly a month earlier-until National Day, thus saving themselves considerable […]

  • That Inghang Festival

    The ritual ceremony is performed annually at the Pha That Ing Hang (Ing Hang Stupa), one of the most sacred stupas in Savannakhet Province and in Central Lao. In December people organize a festival to show their respect to Buddhism and to the people who built this stupa. Many people including the old and young […]

  • Buddhist Scriptures (Hor Thri Pidok) Ceremony in Salavanh Province

    Built over 200-years ago, bombers destroyed the original Simongkhoun Temple on the Xe Don River in 1972. Remnants of this temple and its stupa can still be seen in the town’s northeast, though vines and shrubs try to hide it. Novice monks sometimes rest in the temple’s sala on the river bank near the warehouse […]