This weekend is Loi Krathong here in Thailand. Occurring once a year on a full moon, Loi Krathong is a festival where people send flower-shaped floats out to sea for good luck. These floats are made out of bread or banana leaves and have incense and candles stuck in the middle. If the float goes out with the tide, you will have good luck for the next year. If the float comes back, you better watch out.
Last night was the eve of the big celebration but was a party just the same. We witnessed a beauty pageant with lots of ladies from the local bars, including our favorite-named bar–The Body Nude Club.
The Ladies
We couldn’t follow most of the pageant because they were speaking in Thai, but watching the creepy Western men take pictures of the ladies was entertaining all the same. Also entertaining was the drag queen hostess (far right in the above picture) whose favorite type of joke was sexual innuendo.
The other part of the weekend is the lighting of big lanterns and letting them float away into the night sky. We saw a few of these go last night, and they were truly beautiful…some did just catch fire and sink into the ocean. Here’s a video:
The festivities should be really fun tonight. Apparently the whole ocean fills up with the flower floats, and the sky will be full of lanterns. We already purchased our bread float for a dollar. Last night was great, and we are looking forward to tonight. Details to follow tomorrow.
Around the World in Eighty Liters 
OK… so to the creepers defense, the women are pretty. BUT htats still creepy. 🙂 AND I am jealous you are getting to see all those laterns! Take a good video of them in the sky when there are tons! I want to see that!!!!! I remember when i was a kid, my dad made one of those out of a grocery store plastic bag and let it go off our deck. WOA was my mom mad… we had to follow it throughout the neighborhood just in case it caught fire and landed on someones roof! hahahaha… oh good times.
Anyways, sounds like a good place to be right about now, and congrats on another successful pool sneaking trip! 😀
you’ll be disappointed when you see our post later about lanterns and floating flowers…it was too windy. more to come.
pretty funny about your dad.
That was a bummer post for my monday reading 😦 Dont worry, i will blame the Thai weather, not you.
thanks for not blaming us! phew.
I loved the video! So pretty!
We wish we had been in Chaing Mai for the festival. Google images for that. It is amazing.