Loi Kratong

Saturday, 27 November 2004

Here is an email Christy sent describing Loi Kratong day in Thailand on Friday, November 26th:

Yesterday was one of the biggest Thai holidays, Loi Kratong. It is a cultural holiday held on the night of the full moon on the 12th lunar month (November). People make or buy kratongs (round floating boats covered in flowers and banana leaves with a candle, incense and money offering in the middle) and float them on the river in the night. “By paying respect with the incense and offering, the Thais are asking forgiveness of "mother river" for their pollution. And by floating away the kratongs they are floating their sins away.” To see photos of the day check out my Webshots page at: http://community.webshots.com/user/christymelton72

EP students started the day with making their own kratongs from circles of the banana tree fiber, banana leaves, lotus flowers, marigolds, and so much more. Miss Matt taught us how to make them. It was so much fun to be creative with these flowers and plants. I was quite proud of how beautiful mine were…..Then we had the afternoon off to prepare for the big performance in the evening.

Nakhon Pathom combines their big Phra Phatom Chedi festival with Loi Kratong so NP is packed with people right now. The festival is a week long where the Chedi is all light up and 100’s of stalls are set up with clothes, towels, pots/pans, watches, purses, dishes, underwear, DVD’s, food and anything else you can imagine are sold. I even found a stall advertising “Washington Apples” but when I looked a little closer….I saw boxes saying they were from China!! J

Our evening performance was held at the stage on the Chedi grounds. It was a great night to perform as it was the busiest night of the festival since it was Loi Kratong Day too. After the performance, I went with Matt and her boyfriend to send off our kratongs into the canal. When I got mine out of her car, it was a bit wilty and sad looking....I guess that is what happens to flowers in the heat!! Unfortunately, it was a bit windy last night so I didn’t get to experience the beautiful light rivers like I’ve seen in the pictures. It’s supposed to be a very romantic time and legend says that if you go with your boyfriend/girlfriend it means you’ll have a long life together and even into the next life. Maybe it’s a good thing it wasn’t so romantic as I was with Matt and her boyfriend and sort of would have been a 3rd wheel!! J

Actually getting the kratongs into the river was quite the event itself. They set up these 2x4’s laid out on barrels in the canal. We then stepped over the fence around the canal onto the 2x4’s. I accidentally stepped down onto one of the barrels and almost ended up in the river! In case anyone didn’t notice me as a farang…they definitely did after this!! J But, I recovered quickly and nervously lite my candle and sent it off into the canal quickly returning to dry land. At first I was appalled at the small boy grabbing the kratongs as soon as they were light (not even waiting for the owners to go away) dumping out the flowers and collecting the money inside. But then I realized…..where will this money go? Not really going to be of much use sitting at the bottom of a canal….so I came around and just wished he could do it somewhere else so I didn’t see him destroying the beauty of these boats!! After this I saw several kids with bags of money I am sure they dished out of kratongs that night.

After this I met up with Aw again and walked through the stalls again and decided we had had enough and headed back to BWS about 11 pm. I watched some of the big events in Bangkok and Sokothai on T.V. after getting back…it was so beautiful. Maybe I’ll be around next year to see the beautiful rivers!!

Well, that is Loi Kratong for ya. The festival is still going on and even today when I tried to get my Thai lessons at Silipikorn University here in town, the poor motorcycle taxi man had to go to three different entrances before he found one where they would let me in. Security is on high alert here as there are so many people around! I think we have 2 more days and it will all be back to normal.