ASEAN Puppet Lantern Festival opens at Siam Park

BANGKOK: ASEAN Puppet Lantern Festival kicked off yesterday at Siam Park in Bangkok's eastern suburb.

The opening ceremony was presided over by Her Royal Highness Princess Soamsawali, according to the National News Bureau of Thailand.

The ASEAN Puppet Lantern Festival is jointly organized by the Tourism Authority of Thailand and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), in cooperation with the Government Public Relations Department and the City Walk Company Ltd

The event aimed to celebrate the upcoming integration of Thailand and other ASEAN countries into a single market community called the “ASEAN Economic Community” at the end of 2015, NNT said.

It is also an opportunity to promote tourism and allow small entrepreneurs to publicize their products to tourists from around the world.

The festival, which will continue until February 22, 2016, features huge lanterns portraying famous landmarks of each ASEAN member country such as the Golden Mosque of Brunei Darussalam, the Shwedagon Pagoda of Myanmar, Merlion of Singapore and Angkor Wat of Cambodia.

Her Royal Highness took a little tram to make a tour of the lanterns and later attended cultural performances from ASEAN member countries, staged in the Siam Park amphitheatre.

The 3-month festival also includes parades of cultural floats, ASEAN food and souvenirs festival, and many more activities to celebrate such occasion s as Loy Krathong festival, the King’s Birthday, the New Year’s Day and the Chinese New Year festival. Over one million light bulbs have been decorated all over the event. Proceeds from ticket sales will go toward the Friends in Need of “Pa” Volunteer Foundation of the Thai Red Cross.

Source: http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/asean-puppet-lantern-festival-opens-at-siam-park

-- Thai PBS 2015-11-21

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