Bangkok's Vijit Chao Phraya Light Festival and Drone Shows

After my time in Surin I headed over to Pattaya and drank and ate too much while wasting a bit of time before heading to Bangkok. I kept seeing things about the Light Festival and Drone Shows in Bangkok and decided to check it out.

Following are a few pictures of my time in Bangkok.

Wat Arun (วัดอรุณ)

Wat Kanlayanamit (วัดกัลยาณมิตร)

Santa Cruz Church (วัดซางตาครู้ส)

1,000 Drones Show

Following is the short that I uploaded to YouTube that is just a slide show of pictures I took during the show.



On Friday I rode to Bangkok and found a hotel for 2 nights. I made it down to an area in front of the Phra Phutthayotfa Bridge (สะพานพระพุทธยอดฟ้า) or what I know as Memorial Bridge. The drone shows would take place at the bridge with a 500 drone show on Friday and an 1,000 drone show on Saturday. I understood the light show would start at 7PM and the Drone shows was at 8:45.

Before going on my opinion of the light show and drone shows was disappointment and I would not recommend traveling to see this. If you happen to be in Bangkok when this is happening maybe check it out but a trip to Bangkok to see this was a bit silly of me.

I arrived a bit before 7 on Friday and was luck to find a place to sit with an OK view of the bridge. The light show on the bridge repeated every 30 minutes so I saw it 4 times before the drone show started. They had 2 screens at each end of the bridge that showed some pictures and the lights on the bridge flashed and changed colors. I think they usually also have fireworks but the Queen Mother recently past away so the fireworks were canceled this year.

I think I have been more impressed with some homes with Christmas lights that I have seen in the past.

The Friday 500 drone show was better than the light show but lasted less that 15 minutes and not what I expected. I know drone shows are supposed to be a replacement of firework shows but I think the fireworks are much better.

I had read that the light shows were about 5 different places in Bangkok so spent some of Saturday looking into the other places. I found one video of the light show at ICONSIAM (ไอคอนสยาม) and think it may be better than the one at Memorial Bridge light show but decided I saw enough of it on the video so didn't go there. I could not find videos on any of the others places so decied to check out the show at the Royal Thai Naval Institute (อาคารสำนักงานราชนาวิกสภา).

I watched the Royal Thai Naval Institute from the Tha Tian Pier (ท่าเรือท่าเตียน) and it was less impressive than the lights at Memorial Bridge. I did enjoy being at the Tha Tian Pier. It is the pier to catch the cross river ferry to go to Wat Arun and is where I took the picture at the top of this post.

I had moved to the end of the pier closest to the Royal Thai Naval Institute to try and see the show and had sat there and took some pictures of Wat Arun. I didn't know that the last ferry ran while I was sitting on the pier and they they had closed the enterance/exit. It was only closed by a twisted wire so once I found the exit didn't have a problem getting out but scared me for a minute.

I walked down towards the The Grand Palace (พระบรมมหาราชวัง) to see if I could get a picture of it lit up at night but never found a place with a good view. I walked back to the area called Yodpiman (ยอดพิมาน) where I had planned to watch the Saturday drone show but it was crowded and I could not find a spot with a view I liked. I decided to walk to the other side of the Memorial Bridge to try and get to the same places I had watched the Friday show. It was a bit of a fight to get through the crowd with all the people cramed on the bridge even thought the announcement said that being on the bridge was a bad place to see the show.

I made it to the place I wanted to be with about 5 minutes before the start of the show. It was more crowded than the Friday show but I was happy with my view of the drones. Even though the number of drones was doubled I did not find the show any more impressive.

This was a really long post to say sometimes playing tourist is great but sometime it is a bit disappoiting. At least I am not burning vacation time and it didn't cost that much so I still am lucky and just will not attend this festival next year.

Elephant Round-Up Festival 2025

Last year I attend the Elephant Round-Up Festival in Surin and enjoyed it so I'm back in Surin a year later.

Last year I attend the show twice but this year I only went to the dress rehearsal on Thursday. I will make a longer video when I get back home but following is the short I uploaded while at the show with the Thai Elephant song.



Following is the video I put together of the Elephant show once I retured home.



Last year I attend the elephant breakfast on Friday but didn't attend the parade through the city. I asked about the parade route when checking into my hotel in Surin so I could see this part of the festival that I missed last year.

Following is the video I put together of the Elephant parade through the city of Surin I retured home.



YouTube has driven me a bit nuts with the short I uploaded while in Surin. It has this computer voice trying to translate the Thai elephant song. I thought maybe the voice was in the music I selected so download the video and that auto voice was not in file I downloaded. I uploaded the video a second time and again that computer voice was back. At some point I noticed the video had something on the screen saying auto dubbing was turned on. If you want to hear the chang song without the very incorrect translation, you can set the audio to Thai. I have not figured out how to disable auto dubbing on my channel yet. I think it may not be possible with just a phone so hopefully I can correct it when I am at home and my computer.

I was able to find and disable the auto dubbing on new video uploads when at home and not just using the Youtube Studio phone app. This short has now been uploaded 3 times but I think I have the issue corrected.



A couple of great days watching and a bit of interacting with the elephants.

Muay Thai and Concerts at the Elephant Festival

I had decided I would come to the Elephant Festival a day earlier than I originally planned to attend two Thai Rock Concerts before the Elephant did thier thing.

The cities of Buriram and Surin are not very far from each other so I did something different for me when I was following google maps. I usually take the shortest route Google suggests but on this day whenever offered a way that was say 10 minutes slower for example I went the slower route. It was fun staying on the side roads dodging the patches of drying rice. It seems it's harvest season and they lay these plastic sheets on one lane of the road and let the rice dry. I may have posted pictures of this in the past but this trip I only took a picture of them drying the rice on a soccer field.

When I got close to Surin I stopped and took a picture of a billboard with the schedule of the concerts at the festival. I lose track of what day it is so I freaked out a bit when I saw this schedule thinking I had missed one of the concerts I wanted to see since the dates seemed different than what I seen on line. Turns out I didn't miss anything and the 2 concerts I want to see were just reversed to what I think I saw online. The band I thought was on the 18th was on the 19th and the band I thought was on the 19th was on the 18th.

I always seem to get to concerts way too early. The first concert I attended at this festival it was the case. I arrived about 8:30 PM and I think it was 10:30 when the concert started. They didn't have any warm up act and other than the 20 bhat to get into the festival area the concerts were free.

I do always have the issue of knowing if I am in the correct place and my Thai is very limited. The picture of the billboard was very helpful I just pointed to it said the name of the band and used the Thai word for where and got pointed in the correct direction.

There was a building behind where the concert was going to take place so I went in to check it out.

There was Muay Thai fighting taking place. I found a seat and watched these kids beat the crap out of each other. I would guess the youngest I saw fighting were 2 girls about 5 or 6 years old. I uploaded the following short while there and will clip together the other videos I took and update this when I am home.



The first band I saw was Paradox and they were on the schedule of the concert I attend a few months ago in Lopburi. I wimped out at that concert and went back to my hotel when the band before Paradox finished awhile after midnight. I enjoyed seeing Paradox for the first time and there was a large crowd.

I didn't really fit in with this crowd at all with most of the people being Thais under the age of 20 years old. I was reminded of going to see My Chemical Romance at the Paradiso in Amsterdam years ago and the crowd was mostly 14 year old girls, talk about feeling out of place.

Following is a video taken at the Paradox concert.



I did much better at the second concert only arriving about 30 to 40 minutes before the concert started. I did still have enough time to watch 2 boys beat each other in the Muay Thai ring before the concert.

The band was named HangMan and I really enjoyed this band. I don't think the crowd was as large as for Paradox but you can see a bit of the crowd in the following video.



The next post will be the reason I was in Surin. Chang, Chang, Chang Chang, Chang or the Thai word for Elephant 5 times like the song you get sick of hearing if you watch my videos in the next post.

Khmer Temples, Old and New

While in my hotel at Dan Khun Thot, Nakhon Ratchasima I noticed that I was close to a temple I had visited before and decided that I would start the following day at Ban Rai Temple, Luang Phor Koon (วัดบ้านไร่ หลวงพ่อคูณ).

When I published this post I had not done the video yet but have updated it with the video below.



I rode on to the place I had planned on spending last night and Prasat Ban Prang (ปราสาทบ้านปรางค์). Following is one of the pictures I took at this Khmer ruin I had not visited before.

After stopping at the Khmer ruin I rode about 160 KM (100 miles) to the city of Buriram where I spent 2 nights.

The following day I went to Wat Phu Man Fah (วัดภูม่านฟ้า). This is currently a huge construction site were Thailand is building a recreation of the Ankgor Wat temple in Cambodia.



I rode back into the city of Buriram and visited the Buriram City Pillar Shrine (ศาลหลักเมืองบุรีรัมย์).

While in Buriram I discovered that I maybe more used to the heat in Southeast Asia than I thought. It was about 18 celsius or 65 fahrenheit and I was cold. I used to think this was the perfect temperature for a day but I seem to have become a wimp. I also found it cold in Surin my next stop.