Careening Through the Universe: Thailand

Loi Krathong is celebrated on the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, which fell on November 6 this year. I had first heard of it from the transfer guide I had for whitewater rafting in Chiang Mai. I had mostly forgotten about it until I dropped off some laundry at a laundry place near my hotel in Bangkok and the owner asked if I was going to go to the local temple for Loi Krathong, which was the next day. She told me about how people float lit candles down the river (I looked it up after and they do it for various reasons - to make a wish, to let go of the past, to thank the water goddess). So that's what I did. I actually went to two local temples - the first being Wat Tai, a smaller wat with small celebrations, and Wat Mahabut, a bigger wat where they had a fun fair and market and loads of people milling about.

After watching people doing it, I bought a candle float (a krathong), lit it and sent it on its way downstream. It was a nice experience and I'm glad I did it even though my krathong (along with all the others) only made it about 20m before being scooped up by people in boats. I prefer to think that these people were working with the temple to collect any money people had put in their floats (a common practice) and to prevent the masses of litter from the floats going downstream, but the cynical side of my brain thinks that they were just random people taking the money. Either way, good experience.