We hate to say that Loi Krathong last night was a bit of a bust, but…Loi Krathong last night was a bit of a bust.
After a day spent at the hot beach, we had a quick dinner and returned back to the sand at nightfall. Hundreds of people (mostly Westerners) crowded the long beach, all with flower floats in hand. While our cheap one from the grocery store was made out of bread, it’s more common to see handcrafted floats made out of banana leaves:
The only problem? It was super windy. The candles and incense on the flower floats were immediately extinguished, and the tides kept pushing all the floats back onto the sand. We had expected to see an eerily glowing ocean wonderland, but we saw black sea instead. Watch the crap video below of people bringing their floats into the water:
As we could always use a bit of extra luck while on the road, we were determined to get our little guy out to sea. We shoved the incense and candles into our bread flower:
A local kindly lit ours for us, and Mike waded out into the water to give it a little push. The flame immediately went out, but the float seemed to head out to sea. Hey, as long as it didn’t come back to shore…
Many vendors were also selling the lanterns that were to be lifted into the sky. Because of the wind, however, the lanterns were floating back onto land as well. Quite amusing to see them get stuck in trees:
We headed back to the stage of the previous night’s beauty pageant, and this time around a Little Miss pageant was happening. We totally felt like we were watching an episode of Toddlers & Tiaras:
Our original four picks from the top 15 didn’t make it to the final four, so we hightailed it out of there.
We felt a bit let down by the lack of flying lanterns and candlelit floats on this holiday, but that’s Thai weather for you.