Loy Krathong Festival

At every fullmoon nights in November we will go to the river to float our small boat or raft to thank the goddess of water. Some says it is done to float away our unhappiness, bad luck, anger or something like that and make life better or for good luck. For me, this time I wished for good luck. We call it Loy Krathong which means "float the raft". Loy means "to float" and Krathong is "a small boat or raft".

Krathong or a small boat or raft is normally made from a piece of banana tree and decorated with banana leaves and flowers and candle. Some will cut their finger nails or hair and put it in krathong as a symbol of their bad parts. Some put some coins in it. Some will be waiting in the river to collect the coins and damage the Krathongs which I really don't like it.

In 2009, Loy Krathong was on 2nd of Noverber. I was gonna write about the festival on the day or the following day the festival was but I was too lazy. I always wait for this day every year to make a kathong to float to the river. And since it was on Monday this time, we went to the flower market near my house on Sunday 1st of November. I took some photos of the market. It was my first time there. Wow so much stuff to buy!

So bad that my boyfriend was not here. He was sent to somewhere in the world and could not come and join me. I wish we could it together next year.

Once we got back from the market, my 6 year-old nephew and I stated making our krathongs. I chose a piece of banana tree which we bought from the market. We bought a whole pack with 10 pieces for 50 baht and 2 kilos of banana leaves for 30 baht and a few bags of flowers for 10 baht each. Once it was done, it looked like the picture. I put some flowers and candle and joss sticks to it before I went to the canal.

On 2nd of November at 7.30pm, we went to a temple near the house. The traffic is always bad on that day so we didn't want to go to anywhere farther. We tried once but got stuck near the house for a few hours.

Kids like to play with fireworks at this festival. Aside from many stands selling krathong, there are also many selling fireworks.

Once we got t the temple we headed to the canal. There were some big candles for us to use if we didn't bring a lighter. Once we light our cadles and burned the joss sticks, we brought the krathongs to the canal and preyed for luck or whatever we wanted and let the them go in the canal.

I saw some kids in the canal looking for money in the krathongs. I hoped they would not attack mine and I didn't put any money in there. After we were done, we walked there for awhile and then headed back home.