Yesterday is special fullmoon night. Right, Loy Kratong Festival. In the morning I went to Faculty Building for a ride to Bangmod. King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) is one of three King Mongkut’s Academies. It locates in Bangmod district so everyone’d like to call it “Bangmod” instead. FYI, King Mongkut in its name means King Rama IV and our currently beloved king is Rama IX.
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So it’s the end of November and the moon is full, and it’s time for dear Thai folks to saunter over to a body of water–lake, river, swimming pool, large bucket–and float their krathongs. Now apparently there are a few reasons these Thai folks do what they do, one of them being to thank the river for being a source of life, seeing as we are an agricultural society and all. It’s also a way of apologizing to the river for all the horrid things we subject her to. What I don’t understand–and do keep in mind I am an earth-loving, tree-hugging pagan–is how throwing more junk into the water is the way to say, “Thank you for feeding us and we’re so sorry we keep dumping horrible non-biodegradable poisonous things in you.”
Early tomorrow morning, as little boys and bigger boys will be jumping into lakes and river and ponds to fish out the change people put in their krathongs, our dear river and lakes and ponds will get to pay the price of our gratitude.
For a guy who claims to completely disdain “It” crowd, high society events, I seem to be going to a lot of them lately. And for some reason, this past week I had apparently forgotten that I can no longer hold my liquor like the 20-year old frat boy I once was, but rather more like the 16-year old cheerleader on wine coolers that I now am.
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It feels like the calm before the storm right now with everyone getting ready for Loi Krathong. Staff at work have been asking me what I will be doing for it (they actually asked me if I knew what day it was first).
Apparently the fact that I have nothing planned is practically blasphemy so the next person who asks will get a carefully prepared answer - “Going to Lumpini Park”.
There is this regular phenomenon that happens in Bangkok. As you’re walking along a street you start noticing that there are pairs of policemen at each junction and street corners busy on their walkie talkies. This eventually leads to all the traffic mysteriously stopping and the silence is almost eerie without the noisy tuk tuk engines and buses, not to mention the hundreds of motorbikes and the cars, of course.
So we are shortly heading into the week of the Loi Krathong festival. The Festival is celebrated nationwide in Thailand, especially where there are rivers, canals or sources of water, and each area will have slightly different and unique characteristics - but one commonality is the creation of banana-leaf boats that contain candles. These are then released into the rivers in what can be quite an impressive, candle-lit event.
If you are around Bangkok, you can enjoy the “Festival of lights and splendour on the river” on 24th, 25th and 26th November. Click here for some details. If you are around the Chiang Mai area, you might like to click here.
Going to work this morning, I noticed that the traffic was worse than usual (and that’s saying something for Bangkok). It wasn’t until about 20 minutes later that we, we being me and my taxi driver, finally got to the point where the problem was - a bus was parked right in the middle of the road.
At least I’ve got a good excuse for being late to work “Sorry I’m late, the traffic was terrible because someone parked a bus in the middle of the road”. Using traffic as an excuse normally doesn’t work here because it’s always bad.
You never really appreciate something until it’s gone. That’s how it was with me and Thanksgiving. Once I jumped overseas, I was cut off from the huge gatherings of family and friends, from an afternoon spent watching football, drinking beer, and gorging on food. And I particularly miss having the 4-day weekend.
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I experienced something this morning that I have previously only had occur twice in my 2.5 years in Bangkok. I had a female taxi driver.
I find it so fascinating and quite a rarity so she was my lucky charm for the day.
Dictionary.com defines “harebrained” as “foolish or flighty”, previously spelled “hairbrained” under the implication that one has a “hair-sized brain”.
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