DAY 1: THE JOURNEY COUPLED WITH A PARTY
During Mid-May in E-San (northeast Thailand) there is a festival that takes place called Boong Bung Fai Yasothorn. It is a rocket festival where the whole city of Yasothorn forms in
to competing rocket teams. They work on their rockets for the entire year and whichever team shoots off the best rocket will also win the respect of everyone in Yasothorn for that given year. These huge rockets are supposedly shot off to let the Rain God (Praya Taen) know the farmers are ready for the rains, but at the same time so many other weird and special things go along with this traditional festival.
Our friend Joey introduced us to this festival. He's been five years running and this was my second consecutive year. Once again, we pooled our money together and rented a private luxury mini bus for about 40 bucks a day. The journey to Yasothorn takes about 8 hours on a good day from Sriracha and the party begins in the mini bus. There was a crew of 7 this year and once again, we literally rocked out with our wooden cocks
out! As you can see, Thai's find it perfectly acceptable and funny to flaunt wooden penises. This influence comes for the Siva Linga of India and was imported to Thailand by Cambodian monks during the 8th century, but a thorough explanation of this can be dealt with at a later date.
This year we left Sriracha around 6:30 a.m. and made the rule that we wouldn't start taking down road sodas until noon. In general, that's a good policy, unless of course we're talkin' about Bloody Mary's, which can be consumed anytime, while the sun is still rising in the east. As you can see below, in Thailand, a toilet is never a necessity, which made taking pit stops VERY easy.
After all, I've walked out of a 7/11 before and have seen a little boy taking a whiz on the entry steps. I thought it was pretty funny until he almost pissed on my feet. When you gotta go, you gotta go!
The first night (Friday) of Boong Ban Fai is a huge party. The main drag of Yasothorn is blocked off to traffic and they're huge sound stages set-up, which are sponsored by rocket teams. There is a party in itself on each sound stage.
The coolest thing about all of this is that everyone is invited as long as your ready to get your boogie on. There are barely any foreigners who attend Boong Ban Fai so being a foreigner sometimes feels like being a celebrity. As you can see the Thais on this sound stage made the mistake of giving me the mic.
My goal was to do a special little rap, but I don't think I succeeded. However, the dudes to my sides didn't seem to notice.
The party rages all night, but we know better than to partake in the all night festivities. In theory, if we want to wake-up in time for the parade the next morning we need to get some sleep. Instead, we find other ways to amuse ourselves. 
For example, going back to the hotel room and flipping a mattress against the wall. Then doing flying cannon balls into the mattress. Don't knock it 'til you try it! Plus it happened the year before and I'm not one to let traditions die. Sometimes it's amazing how easy it is to amuse ourselves. However, my girlfriend did not share this amusement with us. She really did intend on getting some sleep and that's hard to accomplish when the bed is propped up against the wall.
DAY 2: THE PARADE COUPLED WITH CULTURE SHOCK
Saturday had finally arrived! 
It was time to go witness one of the strangeness, yet entertaining parades I've ever witnessed. The girls were bright eyed and ready to show us the way to oddness and whakiness.
How would the boys rebound from a Friday filled with dancing, jumping, but most importantly, rockin' out? To answer my own question; it wasn't a problem! The Macy's Day Parade doesn't have anything on The Yasothorn Parade. If you can't get up for Yasothorn then you might as well stay down!
Some of these next pictures might look weird and one might be asking themselves "Who are these people?" but I'll answer your question in advance, this festival is truly unique and in order to have an unique festival "special individuals" need to be in attendance.
I promised you "special individuals". Do these people qualify???
Those are definitely her real teeth. but the stunna shades truly elevate her into the "special individual" category. Take a look at the father and son. Who the hell in their right mind wakes their son up and dresses him up in that outfit, let alone puts him on a bull and parades him around town? Two words: Special Dad!
For those of you that don't know a lot about Thailand's culture lady boys (in Thai: ka-toey) are perfectly acceptable. Thai's just let them do their own thing. At first, I thought this was real weird, but after living here for so long I've convinced myself that if Thais can accept these "special individuals" than why can't I? That being said I still love laughing at them! 
In Thai this one would be called a "ka-toy quai" (buffalo ladyboy) because lets face it, s/he's not fooling anybody. However, the ka-toeys that Joey is hoarding might pose a bigger optical illusion for someone who has had a couple too many road sodas.
During the parade it was an overcast day, but it was still hot!
The heat didn't stop this guy from painting himself black, although he couldn't pull that look off back in the USA. People would start screaming "he's a racist!", "he's not PC!" It would be the top story on Fox News for at least 3 days. However, I'm pretty confident you wouldn't get too far trying convince this local guy that he was doing anything wrong. Can't a guy just have some fun?
I don't think I need to justify putting this character into the "special individual" category. 
I did find it kind of interesting s/he (your guess is as good as mine) was holding up a sign advertising a website. If your curious about the name of the website it is called "suay ti soot." The English translation is the "the most beautiful." At first I was scared to find out what was on the website. My curiosity couldn't be contained. I checked out the website and of course it didn't exist. I was a little disappointed. That all being said, from an advertisers standpoint it did the trick. Don't be surprised if you see this tactic used in Budweiser commercials for the next Super Bowl.
I'm happy to report, s/he is a real person, but with a fake breast and a fake baby. I didn't actually ask, but I took a good look and during that time of day my contacts were still working. Jing Jing! (Eng. Trans. For Real!)
The fat guy in red wasn't too special, but since he posed in a picture with Pee Noi he had to be included. If you think Pee Noi is a real cop look closely at his hat. Can you say "cuddle fish?" 
Hopefully, by now you've figured out that Pee Noi is not a real cop. That being said take a close look at this picture. Who looks more official, Pee Noi or the military guy? 
There is no right answer, but the military guy is carrying a semi-automatic AR 15. I wasn't going to be the one to tell him that a dude wearing a cuddle fish on his hat looks more official then him. Would you tell that to a man with a big gun?
This guy doesn't really count as a person, but I hope you agree that "IT" is special in "IT'S" own way. By the way, "the you know what" did fire. There were a couple 12 year old boys behind the thing having the time of their lives trying to squirt passer byes.
By now your probably asking yourself, "How can you call this a
parade? It just looks like a bunch of "special individuals" or "wackos" walking around and partying. Believe it or not there were floats, but the floats all had one special item on board. A BIG rocket with a copious amount of gun powder loaded on board. Each team puts there rocket on a float and shows it off to the entire town of Yasothorn. Pictured to the right is a rocket float. As you can see, the rocket is propped up to protrude upwards. The rocket is also beautifully decorated. However, when launch time comes the decorations will be taken off, but some of the rockets are painted in nationalistic colors before launch.Check out the
picture of the float to the left. See if you can find the big rocket hidden in the float. It's a great example of how colorful and creative Thai people can be. As you can see this isn't your normal parade. It's not every day where huge rockets are loaded onto floats and paraded down the street, unless of course you live in North Korea.
Thai people love to have fun, but at the same time they try to include cultural traditions in all celebrations. This holds true with this parade as well. All the women participate in traditional Thai dancing, while the men provide the traditional Thai music.
However, for an American like me who's only been in Thailand for a couple of years it's such a breath of fresh air to see cultural dance, dress, decorations, and music still being practiced and appreciated by all Thai people.
typical trendy commercialism that has become such an integral part of the American lifestyle. I know most Thais treasure their culture and nationality. I just hope that sense of national pride will continue throughout the future, because it's one of the reasons Thailand is so unique from other countries.DAY 3: THE ROCKET LAUNCHES COUPLED WITH MUD
After a night filled with Kareokee and gambling Sunday finally had arrived. That meant one thing: let the games begin! Below you can see some Thais unloading a couple of Bung Fai Saen (100,000 kilo sized rocket).
These big boys would be carried along ways to the launching pad. It takes about 10 Thais to carry these things. In the picture below you can see the rocket being carried to the launching pads and some monklets watching with excitement.
The picture to the left is a good shot of the launching grounds. The little launching pad to the far left is for the baby rockets. The two in the middle are for the medium sized and the one to the very far right is for the Big Kahuna. Unfortunatley, because of what happened last year, nobody invested in Bung Fai Laan (1 million kilo rocket).The process of hoisting the rockets onto the launching pad isn't easy and takes some man power.
These pictures are a very good example of how they carefully hoist these rockets onto the stands. 
My first impression was, there has to be a better way to get those things onto the launching pad, but after thinking about it for awhile, given the resources available in E-San, this is the ONLY way. These guys have this loading process down to a science.The year before the launching grounds were very dry, but this year the rains came early. That big lake in front of the launching pad was a new sight and meant it was going to be one muddy day. The picture below is significant for a couple of reasons.
The first being, check out the guys going crazy on the small launch pad after their small rocket successfully launched UPWARDS! The second being, the swamp in front of the launch pad is where some drunk guy chucked one of my sandals. I was headed in after it, but I was talked out of it by an old man who offered his sandal instead. The rescue team (pictured below )
also agreed with the old man's wisdom of cutting my loss. All it took was the rescue team to start talking about "swamp snakes." After they said "swamp snakes" you couldn't of suited and booted me in Armani to go in there. They're the rescue team, when they speak: I listen! Plus they had already pulled a 60 year old man out of the swamp who had drown earlier in the day.Besides playing in the mud was much more entertaining then testing my luck swimming.
Being a foreigner did have its drawbacks. Every time I walked past the mud people (pictured below)
they would take one glance at me and automatically start chasing me. Right after the photo 
above I was attacked by these guys. Luckily, I was able to protect my camera before these guys were able to put their muddy paws all over my face.The toughest part about Boong Bung Fai Yasothorn is actually leaving the place. After an entire day of watching rockets getting lost in the sky no buddy wants to leave the party.
However, all good things must come to an end...
