Loy Loy Krathong: the festival of lights...and crazy students

Last night was Loy Krathong, which is called the festival of lights for a good reason. The river was peppered with the light from the Krathongs (the banana leave boats) and the sky was full of moving 'stars' and a large bright moon. Occasionally the trees were also a light from when a floating lantern got stuck on its way up to the sky.

Even though this was my third Loy Krathong festival I still had a blast and had a strikingly different experience from the past two years. My first festival I watched the student beauty contest and then went to the river at midnight with a handful of students and one of the teachers. Last year, I watched half of the beauty contest and then went to the river with some of the students and hung out there until midnight.

This year, I started by watching some of the Language students build their giant Krathong for the contest. Then I went to the student meeting hall to watch the student Miss Loy Krathong beauty contest. They introduced all of the girls and then the first round began. To narrow the group down from 26 to 10 they did a ‘popularity’ contest. The 10 girls who received the most hearts flowers by the audience continued to the next round. I was planning to leave after getting some pictures of the girls but one of the girls who had continued on said I HAD to stay.

Both girls from the Language major continued on to the talent portion. I missed the first girls’ performance but the second played a song on the Saw Duang, which is a two stringed instrument. Watching her play was fascinating…it is amazing to listen to the amount of music that can come out of an instrument with only two strings.

After the performances there was a break where they announced the winners for the Krathong contest. The Language students won third place and the white elephant krathong won first place. For the beauty contest the Language girl who played the Saw Duang won second place.

After the contest I went with a group of the first year Language students into town to the main river. We took a slightly terrifying long tailed boat ride out to the middle of the river to release the krathong they built. Then we met up with some more students on the pier and they decided that they wanted to go on another boat ride around exercise island (a small island in the middle of the river). During the boat ride we watched the floating lanterns being released and dance across the sky. After the second boat ride where we almost flipped the boat getting off we walked along the stands and ate some snacks before we bought a lantern and set it free.

I had a fantastic night with the students laughing and joking around. All I have to say is thank god I don’t have classes on Friday since we didn’t get home until almost 1:30am :S Pictures will be in the next post there were too many to cram into this one.

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