Phi Ta Khon Museum

Phi Ta Khon Museum sits at Wat Phon Chai in Dan Sai, Loei province, and holds the town’s collection of ghost masks from the annual Phi Ta Khon festival — carved wooden faces topped with woven “hats” made from sticky-rice steamer baskets, mounted on coconut-palm-sheath frames. Entry is free, and it’s open daily 09:00-17:00.

The festival itself, part of the wider Bun Luang merit-making ceremony, doesn’t fall on a fixed date. A hereditary village medium sets the dates each year through a ritual consultation, and the result usually lands in June, occasionally slipping into early July. In 2026 the parade ran 20-22 June at the Dan Sai District Office and Wat Phon Chai. During the festival, villagers wear these same masks and costumes to parade through the streets in a boisterous, Buddhist-animist blend of a ceremony — the museum is where the masks live for the other eleven months of the year.

Each mask on display was made and worn once by a Dan Sai resident, then donated or retired rather than reused — part of the tradition holds that a mask shouldn’t outlive its festival. The exhibits explain the mask-making process (soaking and shaping the coconut sheath, carving the wooden nose and teeth), the connection to the Bun Luang Buddhist merit ceremony that the parade forms part of, and the rocket-firing rite that closes the festival. Photographs and video from past years fill in what a static display can’t — the noise, the crowd, the improvised comic costumes some paraders add on top of the traditional mask.

Insider Tip: if you can’t make festival week itself, ask museum staff about Dan Sai’s smaller, less-publicised village-level Phi Ta Khon ceremonies — some communities in the district hold their own scaled-down versions on different dates, and staff usually know which are happening that season.

The museum sits inside Loei province, roughly an hour from provincial attractions like the Loei Museum in Loei town.