The Thai New Year (Thai: āļŠāļāļāļĢāļēāļāļāđ Songkran) is celebrated every year on 13 April to 15 April. It is also celebrated in Laos (called Songkan in Lao), Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma where it is called Thingyan), and by ethnic Dai in Yunnan, China. Sri Lanka also celebrates a similar festival called Sinhalese and Tamil New Year on the same dates.
Many Thai dishes are familiar in the west. In many dishes below, different kinds of meat can be chosen as the ingredient, such as beef, chicken, pork, or seafood.
The ingredient found in almost all Thai dishes and every region of the country is nam pla (Thai āļāđāļģāļāļĨāļē), a very aromatic and strong tasting fish sauce.
Shrimp paste, a combination of ground shrimp and salt, is also extensively used. Thai dishes in the Central and Southern regions use a wide variety of leaves rarely found in the west, such as kaffir lime leaves (Thai āđāļāļĄāļ°āļāļĢāļđāļ).
Fresh - kaffir lime leaves' characteristic flavour appears in nearly every Thai soup (e.g., the hot and sour Tom yam) or curry from those areas.
It is frequently combined with garlic, galangal, lemon grass, turmeric and/or fingerroot, blended together with liberal amounts of various chillies to make curry paste. Fresh Thai basil is also used to add fragrance in certain dishes such as Green curry.
Other typical ingredients include the small green Thai eggplants, tamarind, palm and coconut sugars, lime juice, and coconut milk. A variety of chilies and spicy elements are found in most Thai dishes.
At 514,000 kmÂē (198,000 sq mi), Thailand is the world's 49th-largest country. It is comparable in size to Spain, and somewhat larger than the US state of California.
Thailand's population is relatively homogeneous. More than 85% speak a Tai language and share a common culture. This core population includes the central Thai (33.7% of the population, including Bangkok), Northeastern Thai or Lao (34.2%), northern Thai (18.8%), and southern Thai (13.3%).
The known early history of Thailand begins with the earliest major archaeological site at Ban Chiang; dating of artifacts from this site is controversial, but there is a consensus that at least by 3600 BC, the inhabitants had developed bronze tools and had begun to cultivate wet rice, providing the impetus for social and political organization.
