January Festivals
Bun Pha Wet: is a Buddhist festival centred on the country’s temples and one in which locals come together to recite the story of Prince Vessantara, the penultimate reincarnation of Lord Buddha. This is a popular time for local men to be ordained into monkhood and for friends and relatives to come together for celebrations.
Boun Khoun Khao: the spirit of the land is praised and paid homage to in this harvest festival style celebration. February Festivals
Magha Puja: is a festival that remembers one of the Lord Buddha’s most important addresses which was given to a collection of over a thousand monks and concerned the fundamentals of monastic regulation as well as a prophecy of his own death. Locals come together to chant and make offerings a temples across the country especially in the capital, Vientiane. Wat Phu Festival: is an event held in Champasak to coincide with the full moon of the 3rd month of the lunar calendar. At the remains of the ancient Wat Phu, the locals come together to enjoy spectacles of traditional Lao music and dance as well as cock fighting and buffalo fighting. A fair is also held at which products from around Southeast Asia are available for purchase. March Festivals
Boun Pha Vet: is another harvest linked to the lunar calendar in which locals come together and make offerings over a period of three-days and three nights. Fortunes are told by picking pieces of paper containing predictions from a large vessel. May Festivals
Visakha Puja: is a festival celebrated in temples around the country and acknowledges the birth, enlightenment and death of Lord Buddha. Boun Bang Fai: is a Buddhist festival held to encourage the coming of the rain and is celebrated with great fervour, seeing live music, dancing and the firing of bamboo rockets. After Boun Pi Mai, this is perhaps the country’s second most popular and enthusiastically celebrated festival. July Festivals
Khao Phansaa: continues from June and sees Buddhist monks confining themselves to single temples to mark the coming of the rainy season. Ordinations are again quite common at this time. August Festivals
Haw Khao Padap Din: is a festival during which locals pay respect to the souls of dead relatives. Offerings are made to temples and a variety of sombre rituals are the order of the day. October Festivals
Boun Ok Phansaa and Bun Num: the end of the Buddhist Lent and drawing to a close of the rainy season is marked by the giving of offerings by Lao people to local temples and by boat races along the Mekong River. The races are preceded by the floating of decorated flower and banana tree creations along the same stretches of river. Major racing events are held in Kammouan, Luang Prabang, Champassak and Vientiane. November Festivals
Boun That Luang: is celebrated throughout Laos although with particular enthusiasm in Vientiane. Buddhist ceremonies are performed during which large number of monks gather to receive alms and a procession takes place between Wat Si Muang and Pha That Luang. The festival lasts for a week, during which time there’s live music and fireworks every night. Lao National Day: is a public holiday celebrated on December the 2nd and is a day on which the national flag and communist flags are hoisted all over the country. The whole country gets swept up in the wave of nationalistic festivities. That Inhang: is held in Savannakhet in the grounds of the That Inhang stupa and sees an international trade fair with products from Laos, Vietnam and Thailand as well as spectacles of traditional Lao dance. | 
