Avanti Destinations has announced that a number of its Asia itineraries will focus on popular local festivals.
Itineraries are based throughout China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Laos. Avanti also suggests booking at least a year in advance, as festivals are popular with tourists in the host region or country, as well as with foreign travelers.
Some festivals are shared by several countries, but some of the most unusual are specific to one region or ethnic group within a larger multicultural nation. Others are linked to Buddhist, Shinto or other spiritual traditions.
Some Asian festivals, apart from Chinese New Year, include:
- Lusheng Festival (February/March, Guizhou/Yunnan/Sichuan provinces, China) – The most important festival of the Miao people, the focus is on the lusheng, a reed instrument consisting of multiple bamboo pipes. During the event, women parade in traditional costumes with silver headdresses. There is also singing, dancing, horse racing and offering blessings for good health and a favorable harvest.
- Perfume Pagoda Festival (Feb/March, Vietnam) – Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travel by road and boat to this complex of hundreds of temples and pagodas carved long ago in sacred caves, believed to be the Buddhist heaven.
- Balispirit Festival (March, Bali, Indonesia) – A festival focused around Yoga, dance, healing and music.
- Knife-Pole Festival (March, Yunnan province, China) – A festival of the Lisu people dating back hundreds of years, memorializing a hero who taught the Lisu how to make knives.
- Water Festival (April, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos) – Travelers can participate in a water fight in the streets, as the event celebrates the hottest time of the year.
- Bun Festival (April/May, Hong Kong) – On Cheung Chau island near Hong Kong, the festival has roots in a Taoist ceremony to protect the community from both plague and pirates. During the festival, young men compete to climb three 60-ft tall bamboo towers studded with buns. Whoever reaches the highest point and brings down the most buns wins. At midnight a paper effigy is set on fire, and everyone eats buns.
- Sanja Matsuri (May, Tokyo, Japan) – Japan’s largest annual festival is a parade that begins with a parade of dancers, geishas, officials in Edo period costume. One hundred portable Shinto shrines are taken to the Sensoji Temple for blessing. Food, games and music are part of the celebration.
- Longshen Drying Clothes Festival (June/July, near Guilin, China) – The women the Yao people hang colorful traditional clothing outside, demonstrate their knitting skills and put on a Long Hair Show. Yao women only cut their hair once in their life, at 16 and usually cover their 5 foot long hair with a scarf – except during the festival, where they wash, comb and show how they coil it to fit inside a scarf.
- Nadaam/Three Manly Games (July, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) – The second oldest athletic competition in the world, the games are meant to three skills that “enabled Genghis Khan to create an empire: horseback riding, archery and wrestling.” The festival also celebrates Mongolia’s independence.
- Daimonjiyaki (August, Kyoto, Japan) – The day is meant to commemorate the guidance of ancestors’ souls when they visit loved ones. Controlled fires are lit on the nearby mountainside in the shape of large Japanese characters.
- Mid-Autumn Festival (September/October, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam) – The festival has been celebrated since the 7th century and is also called the Moon (or Harvest Moon) Festival, the Children’s Festival, the Reunion Festival. Traditions include eating mooncakes, carrying lanterns, watching dragon and lion dances, and reuniting with family and being grateful.
- Dummy Elephant Festival (October, near Mandalay, Myanmar) – Two-man teams wear elephant costumes made of bamboo, paper and fabric to compete in a show.
- That Luang Festival (November, Laos) – Held in and around the national symbol of Laos, the festival is launched with people decorating wax castles which are then carried in a procession. Considered offerings to Buddha, wax castles are made of several different materials including banana stems, flowers,pencils and toothpaste.
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