In the land of ratchaphruek trees: Loy Krathong

We celebrated Loy Krathong festival in Thailand last weekend. During this festival, people float little banana boats called "krathongs" in the river. People release krathongs to let go of the past year and look forward to the coming days. On Saturday, my teachers took me to Tak province where the krathongs are made of lighted coconut shells "Krathong Sai". The tradition there is to release thousands of shells at once, thus the scene is quite spectacular. We also got front row seats to watch a competition where teams had to release 1,000 krathongs in the neatest manner.

On Sunday, the younger teachers and I went to the Loy Krathong celebration in Sukhothai historical park. Before that though, we went to a teacher's house to make traditional Sukhothai style krathongs which are made of a cut banana stem decorated with folded banana leaves. It actually wasn't too difficult to make it, and I made one of my own. Everyone laughed at my krathong, because it was not very traditional (I added my own touches like a fish and crane made out of banana leaves). My sense of style caught on though, because all the other teachers started adding elements of my krathong to theirs. This festival at the historical park was quite overwhelming and crowded with thousands and thousands of people and vendors. We watched a light and sound show amid the ruins and then released our krathongs. We also released a lighted floating krathong in the Lanna style "Yi Peng". On the way back, our good luck of the new year was manifested in our car breaking down. We got back home alright though....at 3 AM in the morning. I had classes the next morning.