Yasothon Cowboys: 7 essential Bun Bangfai rocket festival components

Pickup trucks? Check. Cowboy hats? Check. Questionable music? Every Thailand veteran already knows the answer to that one.
Every May, rocket festivals are held across Northeast Thailand (Isaan) and Laos at the start of the rainy season as a fertility ritual. But Bun Bangfai, held in the town of Yasothon, is by far the largest and craziest, with visitors and returning Isaan migrants streaming in from Bangkok and the rest of Thailand to check out the action.
This year was no exception, and from May 13–15 an endlessly entertaining cast of characters gathered together in Yasothon to drink, dance, leer and cheer at the explosive capacity of over 120 kilos of gunpowder used to fire each homemade rocket.
Here are seven essential rocket festival componants that help cement Bun Bangfai's explosive status one of Thailand's wildest events.

1. The party animals 

Yasothon Bangfai
The festival kicks off with Raw Friday, a night of unrestrained revelry. Sound stages, equipped with colossal speakers turned all the way up to 11, are lined up along Yasothon’s main street, and people stay out partying until daybreak.

2. The performers

Yasothon rocket festival parade
Saturday is the day of the parade, featuring colorful floats and traditional dance and music by performers from villages of the region.

3. The Toad King, aka The Buddha 

Toad King in Yasothon
Giant toads are prominent in several floats. Bun Bangfai legend has it that the Buddha, during his incarnation as the Toad King, defeated the King of the Sky to end a drought that had lasted seven years, seven months and seven days.

4. Mum 

Yasothon
Even more ubiquitous at Bun Bangfai is the face of Mum Jokmok, one of Thailand’s biggest comedians and Yasothon’s most famous son.

5. A very un-Disney princess 

Yasothon
The rocket festivals are an opportunity to let loose before the grueling rice-planting months ahead. Which means many engage in hedonistic behavior that is usually frowned upon by rural Thai society.

6. Insects

Yasothon cuisine
Bun Bangfai is an opportunity for the tourists to sample Isaan cuisine in its heartland, from the mouth-watering laab muu (pork salad) to the fried cockroach, which is more of an acquired taste.

7. Space Cowboys

Bun Bangfai
The centerpiece of the Yasothon Rocket Festival, however, is indisputably the racketeer showdown on Sunday which puts the bang in Bun Bangfai (sorry, contractually obligated pun).
Yasothon
The rockets are judged according to height achieved, how straight they fly, and the “beauty” of their smoke trail. The winning team takes home almost US$1,000, while a third place win barely accounts for the cost of building the rockets.

Yasothon
Competitors whose rockets fail to lift are forced to wallow in the mud, but even that won’t stop them from enjoying the sight of a new heavenly trailblazer.
Yasothon rockets
Lots of noise, lots of smoke, and lots of fun.

Still, when the rockets take off and the crowd rejoices, it's pretty clear that the money is not exactly the point.

Rocket festival
The show is not without its dangers. Spectators who stand too close are subjected to plenty of smoke, while injuries are common.

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  • Kasemsanm Today 02:38 PM
    In No. 6, Insects are NATIVE CRICKETS (not crockroach, common!)
  • I haven't been there. I kind of like it though. It is very very Thai style party.
  • I've been there Yasothon in 2007 ... It was one hell of a celebration. Very much looking forward to my second Bun Bang Fai!!

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Is this the inventor of bubble tea?

There’s much speculation on the Internet and elsewhere about the origin of bubble tea. But there is one tea shop, and one woman, who are generally accepted as being the true, bona fide creators of this most popular drink.
As a lifelong fan of bubble tea, I was thrilled to meet this woman when I visited her place of work, and the source of all bubbles teas it would seem, at Chun Shui Tang tea house in Taichung, Taiwan.
The founder, Liu Han-Chieh, first came up with the idea of serving Chinese tea cold in the early 1980s after visiting Japan where he saw coffee served cold.
This propelled his fledgling chain into Taiwanese teahouse folklore.
Then, in 1988, his product development manager, Ms. Lin Hsiu Hui, was sitting in a staff meeting and had brought with her a typical Taiwanese dessert called fen yuan, a sweetened tapioca pudding. Just for fun she poured the tapioca balls into her Assam iced tea and drank it.
Lin Hsiu Hui, the inventor of bubble tea
Lin Hsiu Hui says she invented bubble tea when she poured fen yuan into an iced tea drink in 1988.
“Everyone at the meeting loved the drink and it quickly outsold all of our other iced teas within a couple of months -- even after 20 years on the menu, bubble tea makes up 80-90 percent of our sales and Taiwanese are proud of this home-grown drink,” says Lin.
Today, bubble tea shops occupy nearly every corner of Taiwan’s streets. They spread to neighboring countries like Japan, South Korea and China and then to the rest of the world. Had Lin trademarked the product, they could have wound up multi-millionaires.
Chun Shui Tang’s bubble milk tea
Chun Shui Tang’s best seller, bubble milk tea.
But Lin decided on a different tack. “Our main goals at Chun Shui Tang are to promote Taiwanese tea and tea culture and to develop innovative products,” she says. “If we focus on the quality of our products and the teahouse experience, we are confident our guests will appreciate that and keep coming.”
I was invited to join a traditional tea ceremony, performed by a remarkably fluid waitress. “Many overseas Taiwanese make our teahouse their first stop when they step off the plane and their last stop before heading to the airport,” says Lin. “They often ask us to expand overseas but we have resisted.”
bubble tea ceremony
A tea ceremony is an important part of Chun Shui Tang’s objective to spread tea culture.
If there is such a demand from Taiwanese and overseas Chinese for Chun Shui Tang’s teas, why not go “Starbucks” and expand to satisfy the clientele? “We have over 30 teahouses in Taiwan now but we go to great lengths to find quality staff. It takes up to six months for a bar worker to learn to make the 80 or so tea drinks on our menu and we want to find committed staff who really love tea and tea culture,” says Lin.
Chun Shui Tang staff employs great precision and only use top-quality ingredients.  The teahouse uses only the highest quality Taiwanese-produced milk and tapioca balls are discarded if cooked for more than three hours.
Chun Shui Tang
Unlike other shops that blend their bubble teas, Chun Shui Tang hand shakes them to ensure the best taste.
Their bubble teas are made to order and are usually shaken, not blended as in other shops. A refractometer, which measures sweetness in drinks and food, is used to assess the sweetness of each drink to match the customer’s specifications. Think of it like telling a waiter how you would like your steak cooked.
Wildly popular though their bubble teas and snacks are, Lin and her team are not resting on their laurels.
bubble tea
A refractometer is used to measure a drink’s sweetness so each drink can be tailored to each customer.
The team has a mandate to produce no less than five new drinks a year and various snacks. “We approach our teas like wine experts; all of our drinks can be paired with snacks and meals we serve. Even babies like our milk teas.”
If babies are digging their teas, it’s a pretty safe assumption that the future success of Chun Shui Tang is guaranteed at least for another generation or two.
red bean mochi for bubble tea
The red bean mochi is a new snack that Lin and her team brought out to match their red bean b

Read more: Is this the inventor of bubble tea? | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/drink/inventor-bubble-tea-885732?hpt=Sbin#ixzz1NGkeISnt