Up, up and away – the annual Thai rocket festivals are here! VIDEO

Look up! Rockets, made from cheap PVC plumbing pipe roaring into the skies, parades featuring cross dressers and phallic symbols, mud fests, all fuelled by rice wine and other local brews (many as potent as the whatever-it-is used to launch the rockets). Yes, it’s time for the annual Rocket Festival or Bun Bang Fai, held in May, mostly in Thailand’s north east. When it comes to ‘TIT’ (This Is Thailand), it doesn’t get much more TIT than this.

It’s time for the north east to welcome in the wet season and pay homage to Phaya Taen, the god of rain, by penetrating the skies over Isaan with home made rockets that are the pride of the villages and communities that make them.

The spectacle attracts over 50,000 visitors every year. Now, just like the Songkran festival, there’s even an international dimension creeping into the Bun Bang Fai, with teams coming from Laos,…