Eastern Thailand Events

The eastern calendar is dominated by fruit, which is unusual and entirely appropriate to the region.

The fruit festivals — May and June

Chanthaburi and Rayong each hold a week-long World Durian Festival or Fruit Fair at the height of the harvest, and these are the regional events of the year. Growers compete over individual fruit, orchards open for all-you-can-eat sessions charged by the hour, and the streets fill with stalls selling mangosteen, rambutan, langsat and a dozen durian cultivars argued over by people who can distinguish them blind. Prices fall to a fraction of what the same fruit costs in Bangkok, and for anyone with an interest in tropical fruit this is the single best time and place to be in Thailand.

Songkran and Loi Krathong

Celebrated as nationally — the water festival in mid-April, and the floating of candlelit offerings in November, done here on the sea and the rivers. Pattaya extends Songkran by several days with its own Wan Lai festival on 19 April.

Chanthaburi’s gem market

Not a festival but a weekly event, every Friday to Sunday along Si Chan Road, and the most distinctive thing in the region outside fruit season.

Rambutan Fair — Surat and the eastern orchards

Smaller than the durian festivals and more local, held as the rambutan comes in, with fruit-carving competitions, parades of decorated floats built from produce, and orchard tours. It is the kind of event that exists for the people who grow the fruit rather than for visitors, which is exactly why it is worth attending.

Boat racing and the end of Lent

In October, the end of Buddhist Lent brings long-boat races and merit-making across the coastal towns, and the Chinese Vegetarian Festival is marked in the towns with significant Thai-Chinese populations.