Wanderlustful: A New Day in the Old Town

Last Thursday was a festival all over Thailand called Loi Krathong. The festival takes place on the evening of the full moon of the 12 month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar. Loi means “to float” and krathong is the lotus-shaped raft that floats on the water.

I am quoting directly from Wikipedia here because I have neither the time nor the inclination to formulate a definition on my own – plus it would probably be wrong. Also, I am no longer in school, so I don’t have to feel sad for myself that I’m using Wikipedia as a “reliable” source, so there J

During the festival, everyone gets a krathong and floats it on the nearest body of water. In our case, this was the Krabi River. The krathong is usually wrapped in banana leaves and has flowers, incense and a candle in it.

Mine looked like this:

The lady who runs our hotel gave them to us. Well, actually we bought them from her, but whatevs. She also waited for us while we wandered around the festival so she could go with us to put them in the water. We love her.

I’ve heard that the festival originated from the practice of paying respect to the spirit of the waters…..let’s not lose sight of the fact that they are paying respect to the water by putting crap in the water. Anyhow, I’m pretty sure that now it’s just at time for crazy fun. There are big raft competitions, and our school took place in one. The kids and teachers were scrambling last minute (last minute of course, they wouldn’t have it any other way) to complete their raft and it was beautiful!

The act of floating away the raft (apart from honoring the original Buddha with the candle light) is symbolic of letting go of the bad parts of one’s self. Thai’s believe it will bring good luck and do it to honor the goddess of the water, Phra Mae Khongka – again, by putting non-biodegradable stuff in her waters (I’m pretty sure mine was made of a Styrofoam base).

You are also supposed to make a wish as you float it away.

Floating away on the Krabi River....I hope my wish comes true!

Loi Krathong also coincides with another festival, Yi Peng, which is on the full moon of the second month of the Lanna calendar. Sky lanterns, or khom loi, made from rice paper and a candle or a fuel cell, are launched into the air. I’m pretty sure the concept works like a hot air balloon. When there are a lot of them floating up there like giant stars next to the full moon, it’s a pretty spectacular sight.

Night setting on the camera made the full moon look like
the sun, but I promise it's the moon surrounded by khom loi!

Before we floated our krathong, we checked out the giant market that had been set up especially for the festival. It was the busiest I’ve ever seen Krabi town! So many people and so much food!

Making our krathongs

Krathongs for sale!

Children making their krathongs

Thais lined up to float their krathongs away

There was a performance stage where little girls performed traditional Thai dances and beer was served in enormously tall tanks.

We found a few stalls selling underwear and I went in thinking oh! I need some of these, but left five seconds later when I was totally skeeved out at the thought of buying underwear from what was essentially a flea market….although chances were, someone was trying to sell my exact underwear they stole at one of the stalls!