and this one time, i moved to bangkok: Loi Krathong

I officially have a new favorite holiday. And that is Loi Krathong. "Loi" means "to float," and a Krathong is a little raft thing made of flowers and bread. Krathongs are made of bread so that when they are put in the water the fish will be able to eat them. I love that. Anyway, the holiday happens on the full moon of the Thai 12th month, which in the real world [jokes] is November. My very basic understanding of the holiday is this: the Krathong, which is made of banana leaves and decorated with flowers, is topped with candles and sticks of incense. The Krathongs are then released into a canal, river, or really any body of water. Before you release your Krathong, you make a wish for the new year, and once you put it in the water you essentially let go of anger, feelings of unrest, grudges, and really any negative energy. By doing this you are able to start fresh. Isn't that awesome?? It's beautiful. The whole week before the actual day is spent making Krathongs and shooting off fireworks. It was a very noisy week! But we did buy some sketchy fireworks on the side of the road, which was excellent. So that's what Loi Krathong is.

I went to the Rama VIII bridge which is actually not all that far from my house. I went with Nick, our friend Cleo, and some teachers from our school. We took taxis to the bridge. Or we at least tried. Traffic was some of the worst I've ever experienced. We ended up walking a lot of the way there. There were thousands of people trying to cram into a not very large space. There were people selling food, beer, fireworks, Krathongs, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The Rama bridge is by no means the only place to go, but it is probably the best. The Rama bridge is beautiful and there's a lot of space under it by the water. It took us about an hour to get through the crowd so we could release our Krathongs. I can't really explain much else about that, but it was just really amazing. After we put our Krathongs in the water and watched them float out to sea, we headed up to walk on the bridge. It took 20 minutes to walk up the stairs because of the amount of people. Wah. Anyway, there were people lighting these huuuuuge lanterns from the bridge. They floated up and the usually-polluted sky was full of these beautiful lanterns. It was seriously one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Then there was a fireworks show. As it turns out, Thai people are super skittish about fireworks, and it is hilarious.

Well, I guess that's all about Loi Krathong. I just really loved it. Here are pictures:

[Lanterns, pre-liftoff]