October sees the start of one of the most unusual festivals in Thailand – the Cheltenham Gold Cup for cows, the bovine Belmont Stakes, the heifer handicap - it’s the Chonburi Water Buffalo Races! As with all these events (the Pushkar Camel Fair is very similar) what started out as a humble animal trading fair and celebration of the annual rice harvest has become something different entirely. 

These days, Chonburi is treated to an engaging hotchpotch of races – with jockeys sitting bareback astride their mighty steeds as they hurtle down the track - processions, and even (slightly bizarrely) a buffalo fancy-dress competition.

As an interesting aside, the animals are now bred solely for the purpose of the event, with a thoroughbred racing buffalo fetching the princely sum of 80,000 Baht ($1,800)!

The event comes lumbering into Chonburi (a mere 30 miles from Bangkok) a day before the full moon of the eleventh month of the Thai lunar calendar, to coincide with the end of Vassa, or Buddhist Lent. After much online sleuth work, HostelBloggers have managed to narrow this down to the 12th and 13th October (but you should probably double-check to be on the safe side!)

So if you’re backpacking in Thailand and that sounds like a good day out, it’s simply a case of charging – faster than a speeding bullock, perhaps? - over to Chonburi.