Once uneasy over the group’s growing repute and apocalyptic vibes, officials in Nakhon Sawan have now embraced the tourism opportunity with the ‘first UFO music festival in Asia’
Todd Ruiz
South China Morning Post
January 19, 2024
It didn’t take long for the aliens to reveal themselves. Thailand’s first UFO music festival hadn’t even started when a shimmering vessel sailed through the twilight sky over a hilltop that’s become a transdimensional conduit for representatives of a galaxy-spanning alien federation.
At least that’s the fast-held belief of those who trek to Khao Kala, where devotees believe an ancient stargate makes such encounters possible. As the sun dipped towards the sugar cane-field horizon on January 12, Siwadon Chantanasewi and a dozen-or-so other festival crew members had ascended the nearby hill to take in the sunset when Khao Kala lived up to its hype.
“I was just saying that the aliens probably knew that the event was happening and would seize the chance to show they are real,” Siwadon said. “I thought they might fly past, maybe just pop by for a moment. I had this strong feeling.”
Within moments, he felt goosebumps from head to toe. “That’s when the UFO appeared to our right. It was a very large ship. It was the brightest thing in the sky,” he added. On video shot from his phone, a pulsing ball of light is seen passing overhead and changing course in defiance of Newtonian physics.
This is all apparently very normal stuff at Khao Kala. It’s here in the central province of Nakhon Sawan that a Buddhist UFO sect says it has been communicating with two extraterrestrial members of a so-called Milky Way Federation for over two decades. And they have brought bad news: doom is coming for Planet Earth.
Local officials who were once uneasy over the controversial sect’s growing repute and apocalyptic vibes – Khao Kala’s meditation centre was raided four years ago and shut down for allegedly encroaching on protected land – have gone from mounting opposition to embracing opportunity.
Thus it was on January 13 that Nakhon Sawan’s mayor declared his city would become a destination for UFO tourism, starting with “Belief Fest”.
“It’s the first UFO music festival in Asia, here in Khao Kala, the ‘Area 51 of Asia’,” Mayor Narongchai Jindapan declared from the stage. “It’s where you can see the most UFOs in Thailand.”
If tourists flock to Thailand’s beaches, temples, nightlife, and national parks, then why not its aliens? Nakhon Sawan is in flyover country and absent from most travel itineraries, an aquatic crossroads where four major rivers merge into the mighty Chao Phraya which flows down to Bangkok and the gulf, carving hills like Khao Kala into the flood basin over millennia. Its largest tourist draw has been a massive freshwater marsh that’s seen dwindling visitors.
Cosmic chords
Belief Fest drew around 1,000 people to a ploughed-over sugar cane field, where 30 bands were headlined by bad boy rock legend Sek Loso. It was well-run, musically had things for everyone, and mostly kept to its exacting schedule.
Attendees sported schwa-eyed sunglasses and temporary UFO tattoos. Foreheads and biceps were painted with celestial glyphs and ETs in raver apparel.
Grinning from beneath a pair of pointy prosthetic ears, Pimpaporn Hanrak shared that while she had yet to see an alien, she had no doubt that they were out there. The universe is too large a place for there not to be other life, according to the 30-year-old, who was proud to welcome them to her native Nakhon Sawan.
Belief Fest leaned hard into alien kitsch. Revellers could pose for mock alien abductions at one of the many Instagram-ready photo spots arranged around the festival grounds. Black-eyed cartoon aliens danced and menaced the audience from large displays looming over the bands.
The festival was a lot of fun if a little sparsely attended. Great production values but still local and chill.
This was the secular, scrubbed version of Khao Kala necessary to win support from the government as well as major corporate sponsors that included Pepsi and the nation’s largest telecom.
UFO Khao Kala, the group which operates a camp and meditation centre at the base of the nearby hill of the same name, was not officially involved – nor invited. None of its core members or leaders appeared on stage.
The C-word
Thailand has a rich tapestry of wild beliefs including ghosts, magic, extraterrestrials, and even darker deities. And Thai Buddhism’s high tolerance for pluralism means embracing such beliefs is not viewed as apostasy.
But traditionalists and ecclesiastical authorities are uncomfortable with those that stray too far into the outer limits, especially when they amass power and influence. In 2017, the military government sent security forces to raid the massive compound of a popular sect centred around a UFO-shaped temple.
UFO cults aren’t new. They blossomed with the New Age movements of the 20th century, from Japan’s Happy Society and French Raelism to Scientology in the United States. That UFO Khao Kala believes Earth to be on the verge of nuclear devastation does not make it an outlier, and only a few such as Heaven’s Gate and the Order of the Solar Temple have imploded in spectacular violence.
A half-kilometre from the festival’s three stages at Khao Kala’s headquarters, veteran alien-whisperer Num Yodnin was listening with approval to the festival echoing across the hills. He said the group’s legal disputes with the government were resolved, and the festival would help mainstream its message.
“It’s going to raise awareness of what’s going on at Khao Kala to many people,” Num said. “It’s going to help people know about the aliens.”
Num claimed he sees UFOs “every day”, and that unitiatied visitors can see them, too.
“They will see what I’ve seen. They can come and figure it out from what they see, not just from things on social media or word of mouth. I want people to come here and see with their own eyes and decide if it’s true or not true.”
As for those who came to Belief Fest in hopes of seeing a UFO: “Absolutely. I guarantee that if you come here, you will see it.”
This author did not see any UFOs during the festival.
‘Seeing UFOs was so easy’
In lieu of Num or his Khao Kala peers, the festival’s public face was host Pete Tongchua, a wealthy 55-year-old actor who helped pay Belief Fest’s roughly 3 million baht (US$84,000) price tag.
If Khao Kala is Thailand’s Scientology, then Pete is its Tom Cruise. Rugged charm? Boyish allure? Ageless and magnetic? Check. He’s got a great jawline and a chiselled, masculine edge belied by soft-spoken earnestness. In the late 1990s, he won two best actor awards for his role in the TV dramas Sor Sam Sai and Angkor.
Pete is also a diehard believer, and those beliefs are anything but down to earth.
Born in Los Angeles, Pete went to school in Oklahoma and university in San Francisco, before moving to Thailand. A lifelong sci-fi nerd, he was first keyed into UFOs in 1997, when a media frenzy erupted after hundreds of people spotted mystifying lights above Phoenix, Arizona.
It was around the same time that a rural family near Khao Kala supposedly received the first alien message. Word spread. Not long after, Pete’s brother visited Khao Kala to film a reality show.
“He came back to me in Bangkok and said, ‘Dude, you won’t believe it. Seeing UFOs was so easy’,” Pete said. It was later in Nakhon Sawan that Pete saw his first UFO, a large silvery object hovering just above the ground. He says it blinded him with light after he hit it with a laser pointer to confirm it was real.
According to Pete and statements published by UFO Khao Kala, they are in touch with two members of the galactic federation. Beings from the world of Loku – location unknown – and a race living much closer on the planetoid of Pluto.
Their purpose is nothing less than preparing humanity for an imminent and inevitable nuclear holocaust – at least what’s left of it.
“They can change nothing. Whatever is going to happen will happen. They worry about the people, the life on the planet, especially the humans,” Pete said. “We don’t know how many will make it through the big disaster coming up.”
Plutonians and Lokurians believe those who have trained their minds will better survive the coming mass casualty event on a devastated world bereft of the comforts they have known.
“They want people to know how to manage their minds,” Pete said. “If your mind hasn’t been trained and taken to a higher state, then you might go baa. You might go crazy.”
He references the popular Ufologist concept of “awakening”, which posits that aliens aren’t sadistically abducting people to probe their nethers but benevolent beings facilitating enlightenment.
The aliens are basically Buddhists, which explains why they have chosen Thailand, of all places, to make contact. That and the conveniently located stargate, of course.
“Buddhism is the only religion that you can raise your state of mind by believing or by doing meditation to follow the Middle Way,” he added.
So how much time do we have to level up our consciousness?
“We can’t say if it’s tomorrow or the next day or in five years or 10 years,” Pete said.
Khao Kala has previously pinned specific dates on the cataclysm that have come and gone. But it’s definitely sooner than later. “Some say that it’s already too late,” Pete added.
So, should Thailand worry about it all ending with a Heaven’s Gate-level body count? “No, no, no,” Pete said. “Never.”
As a successful actor with over two decades of screen credits, Pete isn’t fragile when his beliefs are questioned. He gets it if even his friends think he’s crazy.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “I only think it’s crazy not to talk or think about it.”
Todd Ruiz
Todd Ruiz first reported from the front lines in Afghanistan in late 2001 and then worked at newspapers in Los Angeles after earning a degree in Journalism. He's covered news, politics and culture in Thailand and Southeast Asia for 15 years as a reporter and newsroom managing editor. His work spans topics from human rights to underground music.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3249062/thailand-hosts-ufo-music-festival-city-cult-claims-area-51-asia
January 19, 2024
It didn’t take long for the aliens to reveal themselves. Thailand’s first UFO music festival hadn’t even started when a shimmering vessel sailed through the twilight sky over a hilltop that’s become a transdimensional conduit for representatives of a galaxy-spanning alien federation.
At least that’s the fast-held belief of those who trek to Khao Kala, where devotees believe an ancient stargate makes such encounters possible. As the sun dipped towards the sugar cane-field horizon on January 12, Siwadon Chantanasewi and a dozen-or-so other festival crew members had ascended the nearby hill to take in the sunset when Khao Kala lived up to its hype.
“I was just saying that the aliens probably knew that the event was happening and would seize the chance to show they are real,” Siwadon said. “I thought they might fly past, maybe just pop by for a moment. I had this strong feeling.”
Within moments, he felt goosebumps from head to toe. “That’s when the UFO appeared to our right. It was a very large ship. It was the brightest thing in the sky,” he added. On video shot from his phone, a pulsing ball of light is seen passing overhead and changing course in defiance of Newtonian physics.
This is all apparently very normal stuff at Khao Kala. It’s here in the central province of Nakhon Sawan that a Buddhist UFO sect says it has been communicating with two extraterrestrial members of a so-called Milky Way Federation for over two decades. And they have brought bad news: doom is coming for Planet Earth.
Local officials who were once uneasy over the controversial sect’s growing repute and apocalyptic vibes – Khao Kala’s meditation centre was raided four years ago and shut down for allegedly encroaching on protected land – have gone from mounting opposition to embracing opportunity.
Thus it was on January 13 that Nakhon Sawan’s mayor declared his city would become a destination for UFO tourism, starting with “Belief Fest”.
“It’s the first UFO music festival in Asia, here in Khao Kala, the ‘Area 51 of Asia’,” Mayor Narongchai Jindapan declared from the stage. “It’s where you can see the most UFOs in Thailand.”
If tourists flock to Thailand’s beaches, temples, nightlife, and national parks, then why not its aliens? Nakhon Sawan is in flyover country and absent from most travel itineraries, an aquatic crossroads where four major rivers merge into the mighty Chao Phraya which flows down to Bangkok and the gulf, carving hills like Khao Kala into the flood basin over millennia. Its largest tourist draw has been a massive freshwater marsh that’s seen dwindling visitors.
Cosmic chords
Belief Fest drew around 1,000 people to a ploughed-over sugar cane field, where 30 bands were headlined by bad boy rock legend Sek Loso. It was well-run, musically had things for everyone, and mostly kept to its exacting schedule.
Attendees sported schwa-eyed sunglasses and temporary UFO tattoos. Foreheads and biceps were painted with celestial glyphs and ETs in raver apparel.
Grinning from beneath a pair of pointy prosthetic ears, Pimpaporn Hanrak shared that while she had yet to see an alien, she had no doubt that they were out there. The universe is too large a place for there not to be other life, according to the 30-year-old, who was proud to welcome them to her native Nakhon Sawan.
Belief Fest leaned hard into alien kitsch. Revellers could pose for mock alien abductions at one of the many Instagram-ready photo spots arranged around the festival grounds. Black-eyed cartoon aliens danced and menaced the audience from large displays looming over the bands.
The festival was a lot of fun if a little sparsely attended. Great production values but still local and chill.
This was the secular, scrubbed version of Khao Kala necessary to win support from the government as well as major corporate sponsors that included Pepsi and the nation’s largest telecom.
UFO Khao Kala, the group which operates a camp and meditation centre at the base of the nearby hill of the same name, was not officially involved – nor invited. None of its core members or leaders appeared on stage.
The C-word
Thailand has a rich tapestry of wild beliefs including ghosts, magic, extraterrestrials, and even darker deities. And Thai Buddhism’s high tolerance for pluralism means embracing such beliefs is not viewed as apostasy.
But traditionalists and ecclesiastical authorities are uncomfortable with those that stray too far into the outer limits, especially when they amass power and influence. In 2017, the military government sent security forces to raid the massive compound of a popular sect centred around a UFO-shaped temple.
UFO cults aren’t new. They blossomed with the New Age movements of the 20th century, from Japan’s Happy Society and French Raelism to Scientology in the United States. That UFO Khao Kala believes Earth to be on the verge of nuclear devastation does not make it an outlier, and only a few such as Heaven’s Gate and the Order of the Solar Temple have imploded in spectacular violence.
A half-kilometre from the festival’s three stages at Khao Kala’s headquarters, veteran alien-whisperer Num Yodnin was listening with approval to the festival echoing across the hills. He said the group’s legal disputes with the government were resolved, and the festival would help mainstream its message.
“It’s going to raise awareness of what’s going on at Khao Kala to many people,” Num said. “It’s going to help people know about the aliens.”
Num claimed he sees UFOs “every day”, and that unitiatied visitors can see them, too.
“They will see what I’ve seen. They can come and figure it out from what they see, not just from things on social media or word of mouth. I want people to come here and see with their own eyes and decide if it’s true or not true.”
As for those who came to Belief Fest in hopes of seeing a UFO: “Absolutely. I guarantee that if you come here, you will see it.”
This author did not see any UFOs during the festival.
‘Seeing UFOs was so easy’
In lieu of Num or his Khao Kala peers, the festival’s public face was host Pete Tongchua, a wealthy 55-year-old actor who helped pay Belief Fest’s roughly 3 million baht (US$84,000) price tag.
If Khao Kala is Thailand’s Scientology, then Pete is its Tom Cruise. Rugged charm? Boyish allure? Ageless and magnetic? Check. He’s got a great jawline and a chiselled, masculine edge belied by soft-spoken earnestness. In the late 1990s, he won two best actor awards for his role in the TV dramas Sor Sam Sai and Angkor.
Pete is also a diehard believer, and those beliefs are anything but down to earth.
Born in Los Angeles, Pete went to school in Oklahoma and university in San Francisco, before moving to Thailand. A lifelong sci-fi nerd, he was first keyed into UFOs in 1997, when a media frenzy erupted after hundreds of people spotted mystifying lights above Phoenix, Arizona.
It was around the same time that a rural family near Khao Kala supposedly received the first alien message. Word spread. Not long after, Pete’s brother visited Khao Kala to film a reality show.
“He came back to me in Bangkok and said, ‘Dude, you won’t believe it. Seeing UFOs was so easy’,” Pete said. It was later in Nakhon Sawan that Pete saw his first UFO, a large silvery object hovering just above the ground. He says it blinded him with light after he hit it with a laser pointer to confirm it was real.
According to Pete and statements published by UFO Khao Kala, they are in touch with two members of the galactic federation. Beings from the world of Loku – location unknown – and a race living much closer on the planetoid of Pluto.
Their purpose is nothing less than preparing humanity for an imminent and inevitable nuclear holocaust – at least what’s left of it.
“They can change nothing. Whatever is going to happen will happen. They worry about the people, the life on the planet, especially the humans,” Pete said. “We don’t know how many will make it through the big disaster coming up.”
Plutonians and Lokurians believe those who have trained their minds will better survive the coming mass casualty event on a devastated world bereft of the comforts they have known.
“They want people to know how to manage their minds,” Pete said. “If your mind hasn’t been trained and taken to a higher state, then you might go baa. You might go crazy.”
He references the popular Ufologist concept of “awakening”, which posits that aliens aren’t sadistically abducting people to probe their nethers but benevolent beings facilitating enlightenment.
The aliens are basically Buddhists, which explains why they have chosen Thailand, of all places, to make contact. That and the conveniently located stargate, of course.
“Buddhism is the only religion that you can raise your state of mind by believing or by doing meditation to follow the Middle Way,” he added.
So how much time do we have to level up our consciousness?
“We can’t say if it’s tomorrow or the next day or in five years or 10 years,” Pete said.
Khao Kala has previously pinned specific dates on the cataclysm that have come and gone. But it’s definitely sooner than later. “Some say that it’s already too late,” Pete added.
So, should Thailand worry about it all ending with a Heaven’s Gate-level body count? “No, no, no,” Pete said. “Never.”
As a successful actor with over two decades of screen credits, Pete isn’t fragile when his beliefs are questioned. He gets it if even his friends think he’s crazy.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “I only think it’s crazy not to talk or think about it.”
Todd Ruiz
Todd Ruiz first reported from the front lines in Afghanistan in late 2001 and then worked at newspapers in Los Angeles after earning a degree in Journalism. He's covered news, politics and culture in Thailand and Southeast Asia for 15 years as a reporter and newsroom managing editor. His work spans topics from human rights to underground music.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3249062/thailand-hosts-ufo-music-festival-city-cult-claims-area-51-asia
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