Loy Krathong 2007

Yesterday was Loy Krathong festival, a yearly event where Thai’s head go to push away their bad luck down the river in a home made Krathong - A floatable wood base, decorated in flowers, leafs, candles and inscent sticks.
This was my 2nd experience of the Loy Krathong festival, I wrote a post last year which included a picture of my home-made Krathong here.

This year I live a lot further away from Rama 8 bridge, where I went last year, and with the traffic very busy, we decided to go to another bridge over the Chao Phraya river. Although as soon as we got in the taxi, we were easily persuaded by the taxi driver to check out a temple not far away that has water and promised to be a better experience. We ended up in a temple on Rama 3, it was very busy but good fun. Here’s a pic of the beautiful temple:

There were food stalls everywhere, as well as people making and selling Krathongs. There are also many rituals which Buddhists like to participate in at the temple. These include dropping coins into a shit load of bowls, donating some money to the temple and collecting a piece of string from the monk which is tied around the wrist, typically for 3 days.

Here is a pic of the last of the bowls:

Ropes are tied from the top of the temple to a chair on the ground: what you can see is money (notes) stapled together in rows, donated by most visitors.

There was also a stage with traditional Thai music and lovely Thai dancing, here is a short video I made:

With the Thai tunes, no westerners, food and the temple style atmosphere, it bought back great memories of my time in Nong Beau Lamp Pu, a province in the north east of Thailand.

Around the Loy Kratong festival, they play the traditional Loy Kratong song - It’s very addictive… I was singing it all night which got me a few funny looks, along with a few “shut up” from my friends!