loi krathong 2010

when i planned last week's quickie to bangkok, i had no agenda but to chill out with my friends. coincidentally, i happened to arrive on the day of loi krathong (november 21, 2010), a hugely celebrated water festival in thailand. i seriously can't believe my luck sometimes. same thing happened when i arrived in mumbai a couple months ago. festivals are rad.

loi krathong takes place during full moon of every 12th thai lunar month. officially, it's a water festival where floating baskets of lotus flowers and candles are released into a river to symbolize the coming year's fortunes. that's cool i guess. but what i loved was releasing the paper lanterns into the sky. i've read mixed information online about whether or not the lanterns are a part of the actual festival or if they symbolize something entirely different and happen to be celebrated on the same day (the yi peng festival).

whatever the case, the lanterns were my fave of the night! i wasn't able to meet up with the friends i intended to meet up with that night, but i ended up making a bunch of new friends and we had a blast.

this is how the evening unfolded:

i re-united with my friend ron, a fellow washingtonian i'd met while traveling in cambodia last june (don't get too excited, he's only from yakima - oh snap).

we met up with his friends dr. jabu from the other washington, marky mark from denver, and ip, a thai native, and hopped into a tuk tuk to get through the crazy bangkok traffic.

bought our krathongs (floating lotus baskets) for 30 baht from these adorable kiddies.

adopted nurse carol from LA into our group. hi carol!

released our krathongs into the water only to find people downstream, collecting the baskets and re-selling them (wtf!).

so we went on to take our 50-baht paper lanterns up to the rama viii bridge.

fought through an insane crowd to get to the bridge for our big release.

here's me, not pleased about this girl plastered to my back and constantly shoving me.

and here's ron feigning a pouty lip on his way up the crowded staircase.

at last, we make it to the bridge for our lantern release party, woop woop!

dr. jabu got over excited and released his lantern too soon - and it sank into the chao phraya river, bahhhahaha.

so we made a group effort to make sure mark & ip's lantern would float.

here they are preparing for its release.

it had a slow, discouraging start, but turned out to be a floating success! here's the video of mark & ip releasing their lantern into the sky.

then it's ron and me...

success! here's us waving goodbye to our lantern of good fortune.

then carol is up, giving dr. jabu a shot at redemption, this time using sparklers to light the lantern.

ahhhhh it was so much fun! the sky looked like it had jellyfish floating up to the heavens, and fireworks were going off everywhere. what a sight!

here are a few more photos from the night:

three lanterns awaiting release