Loi Krathong

On Wednesday Samantha and I joined our friends at the Loi Krathong festival. Now I'm not going to pretend like I know the meaning behind what the festival is about or anything like that (and I know a quick Google search would give me the answer, however that would just be a copy+paste job and that feels like cheating to me) so all I'm going to do is tell you about our night instead.

Our evening began when we all met up at Hat Yai Park (I had been at work until 19:30 and was meeting everyone else there) We had all brought our own Krathongs with us, which are little floats made out of bamboo leaves and decorated with flowers, incense and a candle. What happens is you light the candle, say a pray and put it in the river/lake/body of water and let it float away (or topple over as I saw one persons do)

We found out afterwards that you're only supposed to have one Krathong per person/couple/family, me and Samantha had three. The reason for this is earlier in the day; not knowing what I know now, I bought two, one for each of us. On her way to the park with our friends Samantha had also bought one for us as well. It turned out rather nice though, we were able to set one off each and then do one together as a couple. It as a really nice moment.

Once everyone had sent their Krathong down the river we all went for a wander around the festival. It was only a little way down the road when we saw a monk blessing passers by. Needless to say Samantha and I wanted to be blessed, however we had no idea what to do so Leanne went first and showed us. We then went up one after the other. We learnt that you've always got to keep your head lower than the monk at all times while he blesses you. I'm not sure if its a rule or not but I also tried to walk backwards facing him once I had been blessed. I felt it probably wasn't good to turn your back on a monk.

It was around this time that people were beginning to light their lanterns, families were all huddled together holding lanterns up as one of them tried to light it, couples were working together to get their lanterns lit, it was generally a really lovely moment. One by one our friends began to unpack and ready their lanterns. Myself and Samantha had a beautiful red lantern thanks to our friend Rafik which we started to get ready.

By this point a bit of a breeze was picking up and lanterns were beginning to get sent closer and closer to a nearby tree until one particular lantern unfortunately got caught in its branches, thankfully Mike was able to free it using a branch and a small wall. Other lanterns kept missing the tree by inches however so myself and Samantha were beginning to get worried that our lantern would either get caught, not light probably or just generally something would go wrong. I also have a pretty poor track record with lanterns as it stands so I really didn't want any more variables to worry about when setting ours off.

As I held our lantern upright, Samantha got the fire lit. We then both stood holding it straight waiting for the hot air to 'take'. We were probably stood there for about 3 minutes just holding it. There was at least two other lanterns set off before we let go of ours, we were just waiting for the right moment. And like they say (or don't say, I'm about to paraphrase horribly here) Good things come to those who wait. Now, I'm not sure if by waiting the wind had died down or what but when we decided it was time for our lantern to go it went straight up. Like almost vertical up into the night sky. No wind caught it, the fire didn't catch onto the lantern, it didn't float back down to the ground, nothing. It went right up as high as your eye could see. It really was a beautiful moment.

We all stood there watching the dark night sky become lit up by the lanterns. It truly was a Tangled type moment. The lanterns came in all shapes and sizes, there were red ones like ours, what looked like home-made green ones, some people even attached fire crackers to the bottom of them so they would leave a trail below them as they rose up into the sky. Unfortunately my camera couldn't get a good photo of this moment so you'll just have to imagine the scene in Tangled but with maybe 30% less lanterns.

After wandering around the festival watching the lanterns and checking out the stalls, we all stood in a circle and had a wonderful little moment together where we linked pinkys, looked around and each said something that had taken our eye from where we were stood. Someone said something about one of the stalls, Samantha had noticed a iced coffee cup and I couldn't stop looking at a yellow bit on the back of a big Optimus Prime statue. It was a really nice moment.

It was around this time that it started to rain, which brought our night to an end. Always the one to be prepared, I retrieved our ponchos from my bag (purple for Samantha, blue for me, they didn't have orange) and made our way back to our bikes. By this point the rain had become a monsoon and it was impossible to see anything on the roads home. Parts of the road had even turned into rivers it was that bad. Thankfully we both managed to get home safely which was a great end to an amazing evening.