The Town That Throws a Ten-Day Party for Turtles: Inside Thai Mueang's 55-Year Promise to the Andaman Sea

On the first evening of every March, the sand at Thai Mueang Beach turns blue. Thousands of neighbours — schoolchildren, fishers, hotel cooks, park rangers — arrive wearing every shade of blue they own, and together they walk a line of young sea turtles down to the Andaman surf. In 2026 they gathered for the fifty-fifth time: the 55th annual Sea Turtle Conservation Festival, held at Thai Mueang Beach in Phang Nga from 1–10 March [ref:2].

A birthday party fifty-five years in the making

This is not a one-day event. For ten days the beach town throws itself a festival — nightly concerts, stalls of handmade gifts and local food, and conservation activities woven through all of it [ref:4]. Fifty-five consecutive editions makes it one of the longest-running community conservation celebrations in Thailand, and the pride is visible: local businesses contribute to the Sea Turtle Conservation Fund, and the whole town treats the turtles' return as a family milestone.

Getting there is easy. Thai Mueang sits about 45 minutes from Khao Lak by taxi or organised tour, along one of Phang Nga's quietest and loveliest stretches of coast [ref:4].

Ten thousand baht of hope, one turtle at a time

The festival's most beloved ritual is the symbolic release. Participants join the release programme with a donation of 10,000 baht per turtle — and one hundred percent of the proceeds go directly to the fund for habitat restoration and hatchling protection in the Phang Nga–Phuket area [ref:2]. It is a joyful kind of fundraising: you watch a young turtle cross the sand, cheer as it meets the waves, and know your donation is already at work guarding the next nest.

The rangers who watch nests at night

Behind the festival stands patient, unglamorous science. At nearby Khao Lampi–Hat Thai Mueang National Park, rangers monitor nesting beaches through the night, even photographing emerging hatchlings with infrared cameras so the tiny turtles can find the sea undisturbed [ref:1].

One nest can hold a whole drama: more than seventy eggs incubated for about fifty-eight days, then six hatchlings appearing first at 10:45 pm, and sixty-one more the following evening between 8 and 11 pm — sixty-six young turtles safely reaching the water from a single nest. Three latecomers with yolk sacs still attached were kept warm in incubator boxes until they were strong enough to swim free [ref:1].

From silence to a steady drumbeat

The rangers' vigilance matters because for years the beaches were quiet. In 2020, eleven leatherback nests discovered on the Phuket–Phang Nga coast were the most in two decades — and in the five years before that, not a single nest had been found, according to the Phuket Marine Biological Center [ref:5]. Each spring nest since then has felt like a letter answered.

Leatherbacks, the largest sea turtles on Earth, are endangered in Thailand, and they nest on the Andaman coast mainly from October to February, with green turtles following from March to July [ref:5]. The turtles kept their schedule; the community kept its welcome.

The neighbours keep the promise

The festival has company. Across the bay in Phuket, a head-starting programme supported by the Phuket Marine Biological Centre raises vulnerable hatchlings for their first year before release — on 20 June 2026, twenty-five one-year-old green turtles took their first strokes toward the open ocean at Angsana Laguna Phuket, cheered on by guests, locals, and resort staff [ref:3].

If you want to cheer too

The next edition of the festival returns to Thai Mueang Beach on 1–10 March 2027, with concerts, local crafts, seafood, and releases by donation [ref:4]. Arrive late in the day: hatchlings usually emerge after dark, and the evening light over the Andaman is its own reward. Bring something blue.

Fifty-five years of showing up for a turtle is not a marketing campaign — it is a habit of care, passed down the way the town passes down its boats and recipes. The turtles come back because the people never stopped believing they would.