Loi Krathong is a wonderful holiday in Thailand. It occurs on the 12 full moon of the lunar calendar year, which usually happens in November. It’s a blend of Hindu and Buddhist rituals that was actually started here in Sukothai. The purpose of the festival is to ask the water goddess, Phra Mae Kong Ka, for forgiveness for using and polluting her rivers and canals. We do this by presenting her “offerings” of Krathongs, which are lotus-shaped vessels made of banana leaves. Though made mostly of natural materials, nowadays many Krathongs have things like nails, plastic flowers and candles on them, and then are put into the water to float away with all your bad karma. So that your bad karma sits at the bottom of the even more polluted waterways in the form of plastic flowers. I still love the idea though.
In preparation for Loy Krathong, I have been hearing fireworks and seeing decorations up for the festival since the day I arrived in Sawankhalok, more than a week before the festival, and who knows how long ago they started celebrating. Being the birth province of the festival, we take this stuff seriously (we, because I consider myself a Sawankhalokian already)! This year, the full moon fell on Thursday the 12th, which will mark the peak of the festivities. On Wednesday night, Mint invited me over to teach me how to make my very own Krathong! We bought all the necessary materials: banana leaves, banana trunk, flowers (both plastic and real), incense, candles, etc. They are actually not so hard to make. It’s like easy origami with banana leaves. It took about an hour to make my Krathong (which I am totally proud of, despite seeing my colleagues’ the next day that were a million times better than mine), then I made one for her dad while she made one for her mom. (I’m glad I practiced on my own first! The one I made for her dad was even better!) I returned home from our Krathong making session around 10, to see my neighbors lighting fireworks! How cool! I sat outside and watched them for a while…sometimes attempting conversation, but giving up quite quickly. They speak less English than my Thai…which is hard to believe. The capacity of my Thai currently doesn’t span much further than meal time dialogue (are you hungry, have you eaten, I’m full…the necessities). But they let me light off some of their fireworks, and I managed to find out that their fireworks cost about 25 bhat each! That’s less than a dollar! I think we set off fireworks for an hour before they ran out, and went in to eat dinner (got that part of the conversation at least!).
Even though it was a big holiday, I was surprised to find out we still had school on Thursday, and even more surprised that my kids showed up! When I went to my third class (of my best students), they were surprised that I showed up too! They asked why I wasn’t going to Sukothai, and I told them I was, so we’re just playing games until I have to leave class to get the bus to Sukothai. Haha. I felt bad leaving them, they wanted to come so badly. But after three morning classes back to back, I hopped on the bus to Sukothai with all the younger teachers from the foreign language department, handmade Krathong in hand. We got to the city around 2, just in time for the parade! The parade was out of this world, with large processions from each district of Sukothai. It was cool to see Sawankhalok, and recognize some of my students dressed up in traditional Sawankhalok dress. My favorite part was when they had an international school dress up for different countries, and America was represented by a Pocahontas costume and cowboys. There were also elephants and buffalos, as well as fire throwers (but I think it got too hot for them, cause when they got to us, they threw the fire batons on the ground and kick gravel on them to try to put out the fire). We sat and watched the parade for maybe an hour and a half, and there was no sign of it finishing when we peaced out to go see some temples.
Sukothai, Thailand’s first kingdom and capital before it got taken over by Ayuthaya, is the home to many ruins. The ancient city, where the main Loy Krathong festival takes place, is like the Angkor Thom of Thailand. But way less visited, less preserved, and way cooler (not to mention cheaper). Between the parade and the nighttime festivities, we went to a couple of the ruins to just play around. One that we went to has the largest Buddha I have ever seen…I think…half hidden in a beautiful temple. This Buddha is called the “Talking Buddha” because the king used to bring his troops here before war. The king would hide in the wall, and speak words of inspiration to his troops, so that the soldiers and all his people thought that the Buddha himself was speaking. Then they’d go to war completely inspired, and win!
We retuned to the center of the ancient city, where all the activity was. One of the activities associated with Loy Krathong is releasing candle lanterns into the air…another non-biodegradable form of pollution that floats away the bad karma and is absolutely beautiful to watch. We stopped at a vendor that was selling lanterns so Steven could by a tee-shirt, and Apple (one of the Chinese language teachers) and I pretended to be selling lanterns while the saleslady was busy helping Steven. She was much more convincing than I was, maybe because she’s Thai, but I think my “nueng roy baht na ka, suay mak ka” got people’s attention. At least is got people to laugh (at me).
We managed to accomplish every aspect of the Loy Krathong festival, including trying every single snack for sale, and a foot massage to pass some time. We floated our Krathong in the river, making a wish that will join all the other candle-lit wishes downstream. My candle went out as soon as the Krathong left my hands, but I think my dream will still come true. Then Tara, Be and I went to the famous light show. I asked Steven if this show was really worth it, hearing only that it was a light show, and not knowing anything else about it. How great can a light show really be? Steven didn’t really talk it up at all, but I decided to get a ticket anyway. And I think it was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!! It’s not just a light show- it’s a candle lantern, firework display, re-enactment of the history of Sukothai with a cast of 500, light show in Wat Mahathat! So much cooler than just a light show. The very dramatic narration was in Thai, but the cast of 500 did a great job reenacting the story while they climbed all around the illuminated temple. In the middle of the show, they released about 100 candle lanterns at once that floated through the cloudless full-moon sky. No joke, this all really happened. Then they finished the show by lighting up the massive sitting Buddha with candles, along with the rest of the temple, and the entire cast came out with their candle-lit Krathongs. They all sat in front of the lake at the front of the temple, where their reflections were perfectly captured with the Buddha in the background. And then they lit off a bunch of fireworks! What more could I ask for?
After the show, we had some time before the grand fireworks finale at midnight. This was when we took a much needed rest for high quality foot massages. We made it to the river just in time to see the fireworks that get set off from the East, North, then West, then East again. They had such great fireworks, including Sukothai’s signature fireworks that can’t be found anywhere else in the world, and my favorite ones that once it explodes, the lights scatter like bugs and make appropriate bug-like noises. After the enormous fireworks display, we lit our own candle lantern to release into the sky, which floated straight into a tree, but managed to stay in the air and eventually make it past the tree.
What a night. And the rest of my week in Sawankhalok really pales in comparison to that 14 hour excursion. I have fallen more in love with my students every class. I had my 11th graders write essays about themselves, so I can learn more about then. One guy wrote about how his dad is a superhero and wants to be just like him. A girl wrote that she isn’t very good at sports, but thinks I look great, so now she wants to play sports, like me. And one guy, who wrote a terribly generic essay about his birthday, his address, and his favorite food, wrote “I love you baby” at the end of his essay. Classy! Love my 11th graders. Not as much as my 10th graders, who need help every step of the way, and cheer like crazy when I write words in Thai on the board so they can understand it better. (I don’t think this actually helps them as I am sure my Thai isn’t correct and makes no sense, but they love it regardless)
I’ve started playing Badminton after school with one of the English teachers, Arjan Nonkarn. She found me one day before school and said, “I saw you running yesterday. So you play badminton with me”. It was a command. Not a question. This is how she converses: no smiles, no asking questions. Just commands. She’s great. We couldn’t manage to meet up until Friday, but we finally ran into each other as I was finishing a run conveniently at the badminton net in case she was waiting for me, and there she was! So we played for half an hour, where she pretended I was winning by mixing up the score, as if I didn’t understand Thai numbers. But this will be our routine every evening at 5:30, as she commanded.
After all the excitement with the Loy Krathong festival, I made my weekend a relaxing one. My friend Cina who teaches in the neighboring town, Si Satchanalai, biked down to Sawankhalok for a day visit. It’s about a 2 hour bike ride away, and I’m excited to bike to her town next and see all the farmland on the river in between our towns. We had a great lunch of som tam, kaow neow and gai yang (papaya salad, sticky rice, and chicken on a stick), then Mint took us to a swimming pool nearby. I never even considered my town having a pool, and was so embarrassed to be wearing a two piece for lack of having something more modest. Mint told me not to worry, that she was wearing a two piece also. But her version of a two piece is a tank that covers her entire stomach, and a skirt. Needless to say, mine didn’t cover quite as much as my body. But there weren’t too many people there, and I snuck into the pool quickly before they all noticed the inappropriately dressed farang. Being a teacher here, I have to be super cautious about what I wear, because teachers are very highly respected here, and I don’t want anyone to judge me. I hardly ever leave the house in something other than a skirt, unless I’m going for a run, and I always cover my shoulders and chest. I see my students all over town every day, but luckily none of my students were at the pool.
I’ve enjoyed living on my own more than I thought I would. I like to keep the house a little messy all the time; it makes the house seem more occupied. The spiders have stopped hanging out in my kitchen, and I’ve managed to open the windows that had been covered with cobwebs from a year of not ever being opened by Steven. Downside: the awesome spotted lizard in my kitchen hardly makes an appearance anymore, even though I had already named her Cassandra, but I did find a frog on my floor the other day. I tried to catch him, but he was too fast. I’ve made my empty guest room into a meditation room…even though I don’t meditate, but I don’t have anything to put in there. I tried to give it a theme, and put up pictures from different places I’ve traveled to, and put them up to resemble the shape of their respective continents…but I don’t really have enough pictures for it to make sense, so it really looks like a child slapped pictures up randomly with absolutely no direction. I like it. It’s “abstract”.
Oh and I just want to mention what I’ve been doing for dinner the past couple nights, because I’m proud of myself and I think my Dad would be too. And as soon as I master the dying art of steaming rice in my electric wok, then he’ll really be proud. So when I don’t meet up with Mint, Steven or Tara for dinner, and I don’t really want to sit at the night market and eat by myself (though I have before and it is fun sometimes, hold the mosquitoes), I sometimes get a small little meal from the market to bring home. And I have more and more fun with is every time. So yesterday I spent the majority of my morning at the Saturday market, getting fruit, spices, sauce, and vegetables..basically bulking up my kitchen. Then at the night market (I swear, I did do things on my Saturday that weren’t just going to the markets. I watched Fast and the Furious with Mint and played badminton with Arjan Nonkran) I went to one of the tables that has packages of freshly prepared foods: soups, curry, sticky rice, fish, everything. So I got pork with cilantro and a green chili sauce, and tom yum with fish balls to take home with me. Then I made some rice (somewhat less successfully than last time, but I’m learning), an omelet with scallions, and topped my meal with fresh cilantro and scallions that I bought from the market that morning, and had a one person feast!! It was so much fun, and so delicious. And maybe pathetic because I did this all on my own and had no one to share it with. But I’m still going to repeat this because I loved it and want to take a picture when I get my camera back. Best part! There is enough pork and tom yum to last a few days, so I can have multiple one-person feasts. Daddy, you taught me well!
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