Loy Krathong 2015

This week I experienced my first Loy Krathong celebration. Each year the date of Loy Krathong moves dependent on the full moon and it also uses a traditional Thai calendar, rather than the western calendar. My understanding is that Loy Krathong is to thank the river god and apologise for making the water dirty, but it is also about letting go and moving forward, which I think is a great thing to do despite how hard it can be sometimes.

At my school students and staff can dress in traditional Thai clothing for the day and both the Primary and Secondary schools have a special assembly and time to make Karathongs. I teach in both Primary and Secondary, but ended up more involved with the Secondary celebrations due to having a Secondary tutor class and my timetable on the day itself. Scarily the Music department was asked to perform a Thai pop song, so I had a couple of days to get to grips with the pronunciation and sing in Thai. This also meant that I had to wear traditional Thai clothing. I'm not convinced that the outfit suited, but it could just be because they kept repeating that they needed to find a big size and there was only one big size left.

Students from the senior Thai classes offered some lovely performances and dances. There were also some quite comical moments that I'm hoping were intentional. Maybe the Music department performance was meant to be a comedy act. The assembly was well run and was more of a celebration of Thai culture than about letting go and moving forward, although the idea was mentioned. 

I enjoyed making a Krathong with my tutor class. Fortunately there were quite a few Thai girls willing to help me and thankfully to make the design they showed me it wasn't too difficult. I took my Krathong home and my husband and I headed to an area of water where we had been told there was a Loy Krathong celebration happening. Some of the Krathongs were phenomenal and put my efforts to shame. A few people came in traditional clothing, but most didn't. Many purchased Krathongs and some borrowed scissors to cut their nails and put the pieces on the Krathong before letting it float away so that they were really letting something old go!

Watching the Krathongs float on the water I did begin to think that perhaps it is not the most eco friendly tradition as they use pins to attach the banana leaves and then there are the candles and the incense. Considering they were being floated on a lake I'm hoping that someone was employed to collect them rather than leaving them to decompse and cause issues in the water.