Phi Ta Khon, Dan Sai: What the Bun Luang Really Celebrates

Every year, at the end of June or the beginning of July, Dan Sai, a small town in Loei province in north-eastern Thailand, fills with round-eyed masks and gaudy costumes. Images of the Phi Ta Khon parade have travelled the world, to the point of eclipsing what gives them their meaning: a great Buddhist merit-making festival, the Bun Luang. It combines the recitation of the future Buddha’s last existence before his Awakening, rites to call down the rain and the authority of mediums entrusted with the guardian spirits. Untangling what is known from what is told changes the way one looks at these masks.

Three masked figures with long-horned headdresses and fringed orange costumes pose barefoot in a bamboo grove.

Bun Luang, a merit-making festival in which the masks are only one moment

The photographs almost always show the same scene: figures wrapped in brightly patterned fabric, an outsized mask with a long, curved nose, a woven basketry headdress, bells hanging from the waist. This image has made Dan Sai known far beyond Thailand. Yet it tells only part of what unfolds each year in this small town in Loei province.

The Dan Sai municipality does not present the Phi Ta Khon procession as a festival in its own right, but as one component of a great traditional celebration known as Bun Luang or Bun Phawet. The word bun refers to religious merit, the moral capital that the faithful build up through pious acts, and by extension the festival at which it is acquired: Bun Luang means ‘great merit-making festival’. Phawet refers to Prince Vessantara, often called Phra Wet, the hero of the most famous of the tales of the Buddha’s previous lives (see the ‘Understanding’ box).

The festival in fact brings two together. The first is the Bun Phawet proper, centred on the recitation of the Mahachat (‘the Great Birth’), the Thai and Lao name for the Vessantara Jataka: residents go to Wat Phon Chai, the monastery around which the festival is concentrated, to listen to the sermon in its thirteen kan (chants, or sections) and to accumulate merit. The second is the Bun Bang Fai, the festival of bamboo rockets fired into the sky to call down the rain. The municipality further links the whole to Phra That Si Song Rak, the stupa that is the townspeople’s principal place of worship.

This arrangement follows the logic of the calendar. In the hit sip song (often transcribed ‘heet sip song’), the cycle of twelve monthly customs that traditionally structures the ritual year in Isan, the Bun Phawet is the festival of the fourth month. The Loei provincial public relations office stresses precisely that the Bun Luang gathers into a single festival ceremonies belonging to several different months. In Dan Sai, listening to the great tale of generosity is thus shifted to the beginning of the rainy season and fused with agrarian rites.

This is why the comparison with Halloween, so common in the travel press, is misleading. This is neither a festival of the dead nor a masquerade of fright, but a Buddhist merit-making festival into which rain rites and a cult of the town’s protective spirits have been woven. The Phi Ta Khon are its playful element, within a ritual framework that begins before them and ends after them.

Dan Sai, an Isan town with an unusual landscape

Dan Sai is a district of Loei province, and the sources agree in associating its festival with Isan, Thailand’s North-East: the government portal thailand.go.th speaks of a popular Isan festival, the public information agency NNT of a highlight of the North-East’s cultural calendar. In the regional divisions in common use, Loei is counted among the north-eastern provinces. The point is not superfluous: with its mountains and valleys, Loei contrasts with the image of vast plateaux attached to Isan, and tourism language readily likens it to the North. Studies of the festival, for their part, place it within the cultural world of the North-East and of both banks of the Mekong.

A second geographical detail sheds light on the rites. Several English-language accounts, including the Wikipedia article on the festival, make Phra Upakhut the spirit of the ‘Mun River’. Thai sources, however, notably the daily newspapers Daily News and Bangkokbiznews, write หมัน: this is the Man, a small local stream, not to be confused with the Mun, the great river of southern Isan. The error is not trivial, for it is in this nearby river that the festival goes to fetch its protector on the first day, and in which it rids itself of its masks at the end.

Then there is Phra That Si Song Rak, whose name may be rendered as ‘the love of the two’. An article published in a journal of Mahamakut Buddhist University reports that, ‘according to legend’, it was built jointly by King Maha Chakkraphat, on the Ayutthaya side, and by a Lao sovereign. Common accounts date it to around 1560 and identify this sovereign as Setthathirath, king of Lan Xang; these details could not be confirmed here with the Fine Arts Department and should be regarded as customary rather than established. Symbolically, the sanctuary makes Dan Sai a meeting place between two kingdoms, which resonates with a festival that has equivalents on the other side of the border.

The mediums, masters of ritual time

The Bun Luang does not follow a fixed calendar. According to Daily News, it is Chao Pho Kuan, the community’s spiritual leader, who sets the date during a possession session held in advance; the English Wikipedia article sums up that the dates are chosen each year by the town’s mediums. Chao Pho Kuan, a male medium, forms a ritual couple with Chao Mae Nang Thiam, a female medium. Together they lead the rites, surrounded by a retinue known as the Saen: an article in the journal Wiwitwannasan, drawing on a study by Sakularakarunothai (2005), states that the first day of the festival is the one on which these Saen who accompany Chao Pho Kuan gather.

This dependence on the mediums probably explains the discrepancy among sources regarding the lunar month of the festival:

the seventh month, according to the Dan Sai municipality, the daily Thairath and an article in the journal JLCS;
the eighth month, according to Daily News;
‘after the full moon of the sixth month’, according to the Wikipedia article on the district, which places the festival around the end of June or the beginning of July;
‘between March and July’, according to the Wikipedia article on Phi Ta Khon, a range too broad to be of use.

The most reasonable hypothesis is that these discrepancies stem from the annual and ritual nature of the decision: this is an interpretation, not an established fact. All that can be stated is that in practice the festival takes place at the end of June or the beginning of July. The 2026 edition is announced for 20 to 22 June, at the district office and Wat Phon Chai, with the grand procession on Sunday 21 June, according to the programme of the Loei office of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) relayed by thailand.go.th. An earlier edition, announced by the Bangkok Post and the NNT, was held from 7 to 9 July.

The point is significant: even when the tourism authority and the national press circulate the programme, the timing of the festival remains in the hands of those who speak on behalf of the town’s spirits. The festival’s time belongs first and foremost to the local cult.

Three days to welcome a saint, a prince and the rain

Programmes vary from year to year, but the three-day structure recurs in every source.

Day one: inviting Phra Upakhut

On the first day, wan ruam or wan hom (‘day of gathering’), a procession sets off from Wat Phon Chai towards the Man to collect white stones from its bed, while villagers take part in an almsgiving. The aim is to invite Phra Upakhut, from the middle of the river to the pavilion dedicated to him at the monastery, so that he may vanquish Mara, the Buddhist figure of temptation and death, and protect the festival from danger. According to regional belief, this saintly monk dwells beneath the waters; the Mahamakut University article adds that he is also known as Phra Bua Khem and that his procession derives from an ancient local rite for requesting rain.

On the same day, at Chao Pho Kuan’s house, a bai si su khwan is held in honour of the two mediums: this rite, widespread in Isan and Laos, calls back and secures the khwan, vital essences believed liable to leave the body. The mediums’ procession then makes its way to Wat Phon Chai. A pair of great Phi Ta Khon also makes its first appearance.

Day two: the return of Vessantara

The second day stages Vessantara’s entry into the town: this is the Phi Ta Khon parade, accompanied by the official opening ceremony and the firing of bamboo rockets. The order of the procession reflects the festival’s hierarchy. At its head, a Buddha image and four monks seated on a carried litter; then Chao Pho Kuan, seated on the tube of a rocket; at the rear, Chao Mae Nang Thiam and her retinue, the villagers and the Phi Ta Khon, who make a circuit of the town. According to the TAT’s 2026 programme, Chao Pho Kuan and his retinue lead the procession to Wat Phon Chai, walk three times around the ubosot (the ordination hall), then light rockets to request rain.

The TAT, moreover, calls this day the ‘Vessantara procession’. The masks do not parade for their own sake: they form the escort of the prince returning from the forest.

Day three: the thirteen chants

The final day is the most strictly religious. The thirteen sermons of the Mahachat are recited at Wat Phon Chai, and every village in the district takes part in a solemn procession. The programme may include a recitation known as cham ha, led by Chao Pho Kuan and his retinue, to ask forgiveness, ward off misfortune and prolong the life of the town. The festival ends as it began, under the dual authority of the monks and the mediums.

Making, wearing, discarding: the brief life of a mask

The Phi Ta Khon mask combines two elements. The face is carved from the base of a coconut palm trunk; it is topped by a huat, the conical woven basket used to steam sticky rice, the staple food of Isan. The costume is pieced together from old fabric, mosquito nets or offcuts of cloth, so as to cover the body entirely. This repurposing of everyday objects is part of the game’s aesthetic: beneath the disguise, the villager becomes unrecognisable.

These ordinary masks must be distinguished from the great Phi Ta Khon (Phi Ta Khon Yai), which appear in pairs and are, according to tradition, one male and one female. Their making is ritualised: according to a 2025 article in the journal JOBU, the person who makes them must perform a wai khru, a rite of homage to the masters, with offerings of flowers and candles in prescribed numbers.

The end of the game is as codified as its beginning. The players throw their masks into the Man, at a spot called Tha Wang Woen, near Wat Phon Chai, which marks the close. For the great Phi Ta Khon the obligation is stricter: the entire costume must be removed and thrown into the river, without being brought back home. In this way misfortune is cast off, before the game is played again the following year. One may read into this a logic of thresholds: what has served during the festival must not enter the domestic space, and returns to the water from which the protector was drawn.

Origins: the legend, the words and the far bank of the Mekong

The origin story

The Dan Sai municipality relates the origin of the game in the cautious form of ‘it is said that’. When Vessantara and his wife Matsi left the forest to return to the town, the forest spirits and animals, devoted to them, mingled with the villagers to escort them home. They were supposedly called phi tam khon, ‘the spirits who follow people’. One variant makes these followers not spirits but forest dwellers who had served the princely couple. In both versions, the parade re-enacts an episode of the Mahachat: the festival stages the very story it has recited. This story expresses the meaning participants give to the game; it does not prove its historical origin.

A name without a certain etymology

The journal Wiwitwannasan lists several hypotheses: the name might derive from the mask, likened to a headdress from khon, the masked dance-drama of the court, or from a corruption between phi ta khon and phi tam khon. The article notes that Thai and Lao explanations alike link the name to the legend of the spirits following Vessantara, the people of Loei having distorted phi tam khon, while in Pak Lai, in Laos, people speak of sing khon. Phi tam khon therefore remains the dominant popular explanation, not a demonstrated linguistic fact.

A tradition of both banks

The same article shows that this kind of masked game, accompanying Vessantara’s entry into the town, is attested in Dan Sai but also in Pak Lai, in Xayaburi province, in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. This qualifies the claim of a tradition ‘unique in the world’, used in a headline on the thailand.go.th portal and which is above all a promotional argument. Phi Ta Khon appears rather as the local, now famous, form of a practice shared on either side of the Mekong.

Scholarly readings

The thailand.go.th portal notes that many anthropologists see Phi Ta Khon as the product of a blend of Theravada Buddhism and belief in phi, the spirits. The Mahamakut University article offers a related reading centred on ancestors: the cult of ancestral spirits and the masked game express respect for ancestors believed to bring prosperity to the land. These readings are not mutually exclusive; they illuminate different layers of a single whole. As for the festival’s antiquity, often described as ‘several hundred years’, none of the sources consulted bases it on a dated document: its starting point is undocumented.

A living heritage, between national recognition and new sounds

In 2013 (2556 in the Buddhist Era), the Phi Ta Khon game was inscribed as national intangible cultural heritage by the Department of Cultural Promotion of the Ministry of Culture, according to Thai PBS. This is a Thai recognition: no inscription on the UNESCO lists has been found.

This recognition has been accompanied by transformations that researchers are documenting. A 2025 article in the journal JOBU examines the arrival of sound trucks and music in the procession. An article in the journal JLCS looks at how the image of the Phi Ta Khon feeds the design of cultural products based on the province’s identity: the mask has become a territorial emblem. The Mahamakut University article relates that a performance deemed inappropriate, given a festival meant to preserve local culture and which remains a Bun Luang, provoked strong opposition before being banned: the community continues to draw the limits of what is acceptable. Finally, Monticha Uraipong and her colleagues (Ethnography and Education, 2025) carried out fieldwork in Dan Sai with 35 participants – elders, artisans, young people, organisers and visitors – through observation, interviews and focus groups, to analyse the festival as a site of transmission and lifelong learning.

What, then, is celebrated in Dan Sai? The return of a prince exemplary in his generosity, whose story is heard in order to accumulate merit; the coming of a saint drawn from the waters to protect the town; the summoning of rain on the threshold of the growing season; the authority of guardian spirits who, through the voices of their mediums, still set the time of the festival. The masks are its visible part: a game that is made, worn for a few days, then given back to the river.

Background

The Vessantara Jataka, or Mahachat. The jataka are the tales of the Buddha’s previous lives. The most famous in South-East Asia tells of the existence of Prince Vessantara, the future Buddha’s last human life before the one in which he attained Awakening. Vessantara embodies the perfection of giving: he gives away everything he owns, is exiled to the forest with his wife Matsi and their children, consents to part with his family, before being recalled and brought back in triumph to his city. In Thailand and Laos, this story is called the Mahachat, ‘the Great Birth’, and is recited in thirteen sections (kan). In Isan, its complete recitation is the occasion for a merit-making festival, the Bun Phawet. In Dan Sai, the Phi Ta Khon parade stages the final episode, the return of the prince and Matsi accompanied, according to local legend, by the spirits and beings of the forest.