Shouzer

There was a holiday in Thailand last weekend called Loy Krathong. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia article about it. I’m not going to offer an explanation about it because mine will only be inferior. Don’t worry, that one is really short.

My Loy Krathong celebration started last Friday. My regular school had a hand, foot, and mouth epidemic so they canceled. I begged my way into an outing to another school where they were celebrating the holiday. They had games, a traditional song and dance, this hot air balloon/kite, and of course, they floated Krathongs onto the swimming pool.

On Saturday, I went with a bunch of foreign teachers and one Thai to the main festival in Bangkok. We started out at a temple which is close to the canals and fairly close to the main river. I’m really not sure why we were there, but there were tons of people in the area. It had a carnival type feel to it. There were stalls all over the place selling everything imaginable as well as a few carnival rides and games. The more notable things were a freak show, a show where monkeys were all dressed up, and 2 dunking booths with “beautiful” girls ready to get all wet. Most of them didn’t look that happy to be there, incidentally.

After the carnival/temple, we headed down to the main river. There, people were floating their Krathongs. There was also a parade of much larger boats and some fireworks. It was incredibly packed here as well. Most of the action seemed to be on the other side of the river, but the bridge crossing was jammed with people so we just stayed on our side. Afterwards, most of us were pretty tired, so we headed back to our area for some dinner and chilling out. I floated my Krathong on a canal near the beer garden where we were. My candle went out pretty quickly. I think that means I’m destined for a short life. Then again, I’m also destined to meet a beautiful woman because I’ve taken the last piece of food from a dish at a community meal. So I guess I’ll have a short, but happy life.