adventures of growing in the sunshine and soaking up the way of life
Monday, November 22, 2010
Loi Krathong, is here!
This past weekend was the long awaited Loi Krathong festival!
Loi Krathong is a big festival that takes place on the night of the full moon in November (the 12th month in the Thai traditional calendar). "Loi" means to float and "Krathong" is traditionally made from a section of a banana tree trunk and are decorated with flowers..., candles, and incense sticks. The Thai people will float their krathong down the river or in a big body of water. The act of floating away the candle raft is symbolic of letting go of all one's grudges, anger and defilements, so that one can start life afresh on a better foot. People will also cut their fingernails and hair and add them to the raft as a symbol of letting go of the bad parts of oneself. Many Thai believe that floating a raft will bring good luck, and they do it to honor and thank the Goddess of Water. (Thanks Wikipedia!)
My school hosted our own festival. Jess and I got there way too early to get into our Thai attire and we realized that everything runs on Thai time, or 30 minutes after we are told things will start. After waiting an hour, my Thai teacher, teacher Kookkai, helped me fasten up my costume and put my hair back in a braid. Many people wanted a picture with us foreign teaches, they got a huge kick out of us in our Thai costumes. Some people tried to be sneaky and attempted to take candid shots of us. We had numerous carnival-like booths set up, balloon darts, bingo, throw the ball into the hole, throw the ball at the bottles, a bouncy house, snacks etc. 2 other foreign teachers, a Thai teacher, and I ran a booth game of throwing the ball into the cup. The participants had three balls and depending on how many balls they make into the cup determines what type of prize they get. It was actually a really challenging game (we played with tennis balls and the cup was pretty small) and we weren’t too strict on the rules. There was also a beauty contest to determine what child would be this years Mr. and Mrs. Loi Krathong. The girls in my class performed a dance, which was adorable.. They had been practicing for weeks! My Thai teacher did I wonderful job teaching and choreographing the dance, which I didn’t realize the song to the dance is about Barbie (the song is in Thai). All the money earned from the school festival is saved for the end of the year teacher trip! Woo!
The next day, the actual day of Loi Krathong, Jess and I checked out the festivities at the university. Well, it seemed like the entire city did the same thing! It was extremely crowded but great fun, it reminded me of the Del Mar Fair (known as the San Diego County Fair to those that are not San Diegans). Pushing our way through the crowd, we got many stares, some “Welcome to Khon Kaen!” yells, a few “FARANG” (foreigner) screeches, and a couple groups of girls asking to take pictures with us. There were lots of things for sale, including turtles, birds, eels, and fish to set free into the water for good luck. There were thousands of krathongs to choose from and I narrowed down my choices to one for 20 baht with beautiful flowers. After taking the much needed photographs, Jess and I made our way to the water to push our krathongs into the lake and receive some good ole’ Thai goodluck. We were shocked to discover that there were young boys and a few men wadding in the DIRTY water, begging. When the police got close, they swan and hid under the dock but quickly came back, holding onto the dock. I felt extremely uncomfortable as I was trying to put my krathong into the water while these boys were staring at me with their hands out. I have found that I am often pinpointed by the homeless and others seeking money because I am white (little do they know, I am now making a Thai salary). I ended up kind of tossing my krathong into the lake to escape and continue onto the rest of the festival. We ended up getting some Pad Thai (what a shocker!) and rode on the sketchiest ferris wheel I’ve ever been on. We decided to head home early to beat the crowd out and jumped on what we thought was the last songtell home. We got a wonderful tour of the Khon Kaen University campus, as the songtell was making its final stop in some very random location. We met some girls on the songtell who are studying English at the university (thank goodness!) and they called us a cab to take us home.
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