After five weeks on the road, Sara and I returned to Hang Chat ready to get back into a routine. Luckily for Sara, who had gotten quite used to not working forty-plus hours a week, that routine consisted of two four-day weeks, a three-day week, and, my personal favorite, a two-day week. The two-day week wrapped up the last week of November, and Sara was set free for five days in honor of Loy Krathong, yet another Buddhist holiday honoring the spirits.
Now normally a blog post about a festival/holiday like Loy Krathong would include a little about the holiday's history and meaning. However, it seems kind of silly for me to copy and paste information from Wikipedia when literally no one here in Thailand was able to tell us what the holiday meant. A few months ago, Sara and I had the opportunity to interview English speaking high school students who wanted to travel abroad. We were part of separate three-person panels that did one-on-one interviews with the students, asking questions about both Thailand and the country they wished to study in. The only question that consistently stumped the applicants was, "Tell me a little more about the history and meaning of Loy Krathong." Even the teachers at Sara's school could only describe what the celebration consisted of, not its meaning or history. Suffice it to say, it is a big deal and Sara was excited to head to Chiang Mai to celebrate it.
This was probably our tenth trip to Chiang Mai, and we stayed at our tenth different guest house. Since I don't have anything nice to say about the Julie Guesthouse, I wont say anything at all. We keep trying new places hoping to find that ideal combination of cleanliness, location, and quiet, but I have a feeling we'll have to leave the ten dollar a night bracket if we're ever going to find a keeper.
Luckily, we weren't in Chiang Mai to sit around our guesthouse! During the day, we bummed around town, admired the krathong for sale as well as supplies,
and visited a homemade hot-air balloon contest that featured some amazingly crafted entries. The announcers would scream with glee while the balloon teams attempted to send up their creations without ripping the material or setting everyone on fire.
We headed downtown both nights to check out the celebrations, which included a beauty contest, a massive parade,
blow-up models of famous buildings around the world,
and countless people sending floating lanterns into the sky
and decorative banana-leaf boats into the river. These lotus-shaped boats are called krathong, so the holiday's name translates as "floating floats." Fun, huh? Sara “helped” another foreigner send up his lantern along the old city moat, promptly getting it caught in a tree. We’re not sure what sort of luck that merits, oops! So we quietly slipped away and joined the crowds of people following alongside the parade headed for the river.
We thought the moat area was busy until we got to the bridge, where there were probably 5,000 people celebrating. Getting caught up in the crush of people, we made our way down to the waterfront and bought a turtle-shaped float made out of bread that the fish would eat. There was a father and his young son standing waist deep in the river, helping people send our their floats. I didn't learn until later that most Thai people put a coin or two on their float as an offering to the river spirits, and these helpers would grab the coins as payment for assisting.
It was a beautiful celebration, and much more peaceful than anything equivalent in America, as Thai people don't tend to be very loud, nor do they get noticeably intoxicated. We could definitely learn a thing or two about congregating from them!
(not my video)
Now normally a blog post about a festival/holiday like Loy Krathong would include a little about the holiday's history and meaning. However, it seems kind of silly for me to copy and paste information from Wikipedia when literally no one here in Thailand was able to tell us what the holiday meant. A few months ago, Sara and I had the opportunity to interview English speaking high school students who wanted to travel abroad. We were part of separate three-person panels that did one-on-one interviews with the students, asking questions about both Thailand and the country they wished to study in. The only question that consistently stumped the applicants was, "Tell me a little more about the history and meaning of Loy Krathong." Even the teachers at Sara's school could only describe what the celebration consisted of, not its meaning or history. Suffice it to say, it is a big deal and Sara was excited to head to Chiang Mai to celebrate it.
This was probably our tenth trip to Chiang Mai, and we stayed at our tenth different guest house. Since I don't have anything nice to say about the Julie Guesthouse, I wont say anything at all. We keep trying new places hoping to find that ideal combination of cleanliness, location, and quiet, but I have a feeling we'll have to leave the ten dollar a night bracket if we're ever going to find a keeper.
Luckily, we weren't in Chiang Mai to sit around our guesthouse! During the day, we bummed around town, admired the krathong for sale as well as supplies,
and visited a homemade hot-air balloon contest that featured some amazingly crafted entries. The announcers would scream with glee while the balloon teams attempted to send up their creations without ripping the material or setting everyone on fire.
We headed downtown both nights to check out the celebrations, which included a beauty contest, a massive parade,
blow-up models of famous buildings around the world,
and countless people sending floating lanterns into the sky
and decorative banana-leaf boats into the river. These lotus-shaped boats are called krathong, so the holiday's name translates as "floating floats." Fun, huh? Sara “helped” another foreigner send up his lantern along the old city moat, promptly getting it caught in a tree. We’re not sure what sort of luck that merits, oops! So we quietly slipped away and joined the crowds of people following alongside the parade headed for the river.
We thought the moat area was busy until we got to the bridge, where there were probably 5,000 people celebrating. Getting caught up in the crush of people, we made our way down to the waterfront and bought a turtle-shaped float made out of bread that the fish would eat. There was a father and his young son standing waist deep in the river, helping people send our their floats. I didn't learn until later that most Thai people put a coin or two on their float as an offering to the river spirits, and these helpers would grab the coins as payment for assisting.
It was a beautiful celebration, and much more peaceful than anything equivalent in America, as Thai people don't tend to be very loud, nor do they get noticeably intoxicated. We could definitely learn a thing or two about congregating from them!
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