Loy Krathong

On Wednesday, November 12th Thailand celebrated Loy Krathong, the festival of lights. Wikipedia has a good explanation of the history of the holiday, and what it celebrates. While we defer to Wikipedia on the origin, we can talk about how the holiday is celebrate from first hand knowledge!

On Wednesday Beach Road was full of vendors creating elaborate banana leaf boats. Thais purchase the boats, light the candles and incense and place them in the water as an offering. The boats come in all different shapes and sizes, and some are more elaborate than others. They all have some type of flower decoration as well as a candle and incense. Here's a few pictures of some of the stands selling/displaying their boats.

The beach was crowded with tons of people releasing boats into the water. There were so many adorable children running around and having fun!

Of course we had to get in on the boat action, so a few of us purchased boats . . .

. . . attempted to light the incense and the candles in the windy conditions . . .
. . . and placed them in the water.

Since we are on a beach, and not near a river, a lot of the boats were turned over immediately in the tide. Jeff and Sara thought they would roll up their pants and go a little deeper to give their boat a chance. Unfortunately the tide had a different plan for them, and they ended up soaked!

Another part of the celebration of Loy Krathong is launching Khom Fai, which are like miniature hot air balloons. People on the beach were purchasing the balloons, lighting them, and watching them coast into the night. It was really cool when people managed to get a whole string of the balloons lit all at the same time.
However, because of the wind, most of the balloons ended up like this one . . .

There were also fireworks being lit up and down the beach. Police were trying to regulate this, as the country was still in mourning for the death of Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana.

After we watched the fireworks and launched our boats, we headed off to walking street. It was absolutely crazy there! We saw tons of guys and girls dressed up in traditional Thai attire (although many of the men were in the traditional female Thai attire).

Jeff had to work the next day, so we called it an early night, but we had a great time. We love it when we get to experience foreign holidays! This was probably our favorite because there was so much for us to do!