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Published: November 4th 2009
Krathong - Water Offerings
These were on sale everywhere - 50 cents to a dollar each.We are now in Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand. We took an overnight train from Bangkok, and we’re renting an apartment in Chiang Mai for five weeks. We’ll write more about Chiang Mai later.
For now, I wanted to write about Loy Krathong, a major three-day Thai festival that happened to start the day we arrived in Chiang Mai.
Note: I tried to uploaded some videos here, to give a better sense of the festival. But somehow you can't get to them here. Just ignore them, because I don't think you can watch them here. Maybe I'll get around to posting them on YouTube.... Introduction. Loy Krathong is one of the main Thai festivals of the year. It’s also called Yee Peng in Chiang Mai, because I think it’s bigger here than in most places in Thailand, and a bit different.
I looked online about it, and found out that the origins of Loy Krathong are unclear.
Probably it’s related to India’s Deepvali festival, also a festival of lights. At some point, the Thai Buddha-fied what was originally a Brahmin holiday, and it
Beautiful Princess on Float
Each float had one to three Thai women dressed in local finery, like a princess. became Loy Krathong.
Loy Krathong: Floating water offerings. “Loy” means “to float,” and “Krathong” refers to water offerings. This is one of the main parts of Loy Krathong, and the part I had heard about in the US: Buying or making these offerings of banana leaves and flowers and a little stick of incense, and setting it afloat on the river.
I had heard about these water offerings before we came here. I pictured this serene mystical Eastern experience, where people chant Buddhist chants and serenely place these hand-made, flower-ful floats into the peaceful river, and the floats drift down the river, and we all contemplate the beauty and meaning of life together. Or something like that.
How the water offerings work. The reality was quite different. Here’s how it all happens.
In Chiang Mai the river is not to far from the old town, the historic walled center of town.
All along the area near the main bridge running over the river are heaps and heaps of Loy Krathong goodies and excitement.
The “krathong,” or water offerings, are for sale everywhere for 50 cents to a dollar. They are hand-made: the stall owners
People Ordering - Street Food
This captures well what it was like - lots of people ordering and eating things I can't really recognize. have made them. Most of them have a hard dough or banana tree stalks (or even styrofoam) center, an edge of banana leaves, a bunch of flowers (often orchids), and a few incense sticks or a candle.
Also for sale everywhere is food of every sort you can imagine, and many sorts you can’t imagine. The pictures give a sense of the range of foods available for your snacking pleasure.
There are also fireworks everywhere. Fireworks are a big part of Loy Krathong. People buy all kinds, from sparklers to what sound like artillery shells. The sparklers are cute. The artillery shells make your chest shake and your ears hum, and they echo, almost like a sonic boom. Thai boys like to get the really loud one and throw them at each others’ feet, or at the feet of unsuspecting tourists. Everywhere there are fireworks, so much so that at times it became overwhelming and a bit scary, even to me.
There are also for sale everywhere these fire balloons called “kom fai.” I’ll describe these more below; they are a key part of the festival too.
Finally, there are a gazillion people everywhere. Mostly Thai,
1. Lighting Fire Balloon
This is a sequence: Here the guy has just lit the fire balloon. but plenty of tourists. The crowds are thick, and you can hardly move. It’s all very festive and happy, but it’s also thickly crowded.
So, this is the setting for putting the “krathong” (the water offerings) into the river.
You buy your krathong from one of the stalls, and they light the incense or candle.
You carry it down the bank of the river. There’s a little shaky bamboo pier right on the river. It’s packed with people, both on the pier and carefully working their way down the bank to get to the pier.
There are boys in the river who will take your krathong and sort of get it out into the current, so that it doesn’t get stuck along the bank.
Other boys are throwing fire-crackers into the river, lots of them. There are explosions everywhere. Every five to ten seconds the water sort of explodes up into the air, like a small hand grenade hit.
You put your krathong in the river, and it drifts down with many other krathongs, forming a line of lights moving down the river.
It’s pretty, and fascinating. But it’s also explosive and loud
2. Holding Up the Fire Balloon
Here the guy is holding the fire balloon up, getting ready to let it go. and wild and chaotic and fun, more like a combination of a state fair and the Fourth of July in the US. I always thought it was some serene Buddhist bliss-out, but it’s not.
Fire balloons: Kom Fai. The most interesting part of Loy Krathong as celebrated in the north of Thailand is something that I had never heard of in the US: these things called “Kom Fai,” which I’ll call fire balloons.
Kom Fai are on sale everywhere in the main celebratory strip, running a couple of miles down the closed-off main streets of Chiang Mai.
Kom Fai are paper balloons, sort of. You can see them in the pictures and the videos. The balloons are made out of some sort of tough paper. They have a thin wire frame at the bottom, and in the center of the wire frame they have a small round fire thing. The fire thing is maybe like a solid Sterno or something - a solid little ring that burns continually when you light it.
You buy your kom fai (fire balloon) from a stall. They light the small round fire thing for you.
You have to let
3. Fire Balloon Takeoff
Here he's just let go of the fire balloon, and it's starting to rise up. the paper balloon part fill up with hot air, because that’s what makes it float. So you just stand there a while, holding your fire balloon, while it fills up with hot air.
After 2-5 minutes, your balloon probably has enough hot air. You sort of reach your arms up as high as you can, and you gently let it go. It slowly rises up in the air, floating up and out gently.
It’s lovely to see one fire balloon go up. What’s astounding is to see many, many fire balloons going up, all at once - not coordinated in any way, just hundreds of people releasing their fire balloons in a one of the main festival areas.
The sky gets filled with drifting fire balloons. They ease across the sky, looking like fire ghosts, or fire jellyfish.
The fire balloons are a bit like those candles-in-a-bag things that we put along sidewalks sometimes in the US at Christmas, but much bigger (the bag is about the size of a person). And instead of lining sidewalks, they float up through the sky by the thousands.
From dark till around midnight the sky across Chiang Mai
4. Fire Balloon Ascending
Here the fire balloon is moving up over the bridge. is filled with these fire balloons. Everywhere you look, they are moving in lines up from the main festival areas, all drifting along at roughly the same pace.
Our apartment has a porch, and we would come back after walking around, and just be dumbfounded by the sky over the city, with all of the drifting dots of fire everywhere, like huge schools of fire jellyfish or drifting fireflies that never blink.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It is a dumbfounding, magical, shivery sort of sight.
Loy Krathong parades. All of this went on for three nights. Every night there was a parade as well. The main streets (including one right near our apartment) would close for the parade.
On the last night, the parade was quite spectacular. You can get a sense of it from the picture and videos.
The most spectacular were the floats, which usually were all lit up from the inside somehow, and peopled by lovely Thais in traditional Lanna (Northern Thai) dress.
The crowds on the last night were thick too. You could tell that most of the town had turned out to see the parade.
Loy 5. Fire Balloon Leaving
Here the fire balloon is getting up high, getting ready to mix in with all of the others already in the sky. Krathong was fun. Every night for the past three nights we went out and enjoyed all of this. It seemed to go on all night. This morning I got up early, and there were fireworks (loud ones, with no letup) right until dawn.
We had a blast walking around and enjoying all of this. The pictures tell a good story. The town was like this - chock-a-block with food stalls, fire balloons going up, people everywhere, stuff for sale - for miles and miles along the main festival procession path.
It was all crowded and loud and wide open. People hooting and hollering and laughing. Fire-crackers going off everywhere, especially on the bridge over the river. Hawkers yelling things in Thai as they sell whatever they’re selling.
Sometimes it was overwhelming. Ella and May didn’t like to go out on the bridge with all the fireworks. I was a bit fried too last night, after walking around, from all of the odd food smells and crowds and fire-crackers exploding under my feet.
Then we came back to our apartment, and went out on the porch, and the sky was filled with fire balloons drifting up and
Fire Balloons Dotting the Sky
This picture tries to capture how it looks to see all the fire balloons drifting across the sky - a view from our porch. out over the city, gracefully, slowly, gently. Just lovely.
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Elizabeth MacMillan
non-member comment
cool!
Those photos are so cool! Have a great rest of the trip! I wish I was there with you! Elizabeth