The most exciting holiday that I’ve experienced, hands down, is Loy Kratong. It was this past weekend, and I only got back from it last night at 2:00am. The festival is what many people think of when they think of Thailand- the beautiful and picturesque lighting of thousands of lanterns at one time, and making a wish as yours floats up into the sky.
Friends and I went up to the north to Chiang Mai, where the festival is celebrated very strongly due to the cultures in northern Thailand. In the days leading up to the festival, lanterns start popping up everywhere- streets, temples, store fronts. The whole town knows about the festival, and it’s a big spot for tourists. On the day of the festival, we went to a temple suggested by our advisor. The program started at 8:00, and we got there early to get good spots, but it was already incredibly packed by 7:15. At this temple were monks sitting under a tree, surrounded by candles on the floor, with lanterns hanging from the tree above them. They were chanting, and there was a massive amount of people there, paying respects, taking pictures, praying. The air was incredible, and there was a tangible feeling of community with everyone standing there, fixated on the monks as they chanted.
After about 20 minutes there, two friends and I decided to follow the lanterns that we saw were being lit up by the river to the east of us. We were attempting to reach them by following their ascent, and decided to grab a moped to get them faster. I drove through the city with the two of them on the back, all staring up to follow the path of these lanterns to their release points. The traffic was horrible, and it took a lot longer than typical, but we were moving with a mass of people in the same mindset as us. Eventually, we got closer, ditched the moped, and made our way through the crowd to find where people were sending the lanterns off. We found the point next to the river where people were lighting the lanterns and sending them up, bought our own, and followed the crowd. The communal feeling was incredible- everyone was happy and fixated on the lanterns, people were sharing lighters to light them, helping each other out so the fragile paper lanterns wouldn’t light on fire (which, unfortunately, happened to us later that day.) It truly was an incredible experience, and not something that pictures or videos can replicate well.
Live entertainment has been very varied and interesting. In the islands, it’s geared towards a younger, more energetic crowd, and typically involves fire. Jumping through it, eating it, swinging it around on ropes. In the city, there are tons of live performers in all of the big touristy areas. Khao San, a huge international hot spot, has a bunch of them, in addition to people selling everything you can think of. I’ve been to a jazz show, where I met the lead singer of the band- a man from North Carolina who was bouncing around countries in Asia while teaching English. Unfortunately, I have yet to have the opportunity to go to a Muay Thai fight. I really, really want to, they’re a huge spectacle here and I’d love to watch one, and it’s definitely in my plan before I head back home.
The live entertainment here typically falls into one of two buckets, from what I can think of in retrospect. It’s typically something very strong in Thai culture, something that people have been doing in Thailand for quite a while, or something that is catered exclusively towards tourists, and wouldn’t exist without them. One difference between live entertainment here and back home is that a lot of people here live for tourists’ money. They change everything to be something that tourists might like, and that’s how they live their lives. It’s truly sad to see in some situations, and not something that I enjoy seeing often. For me and a lot of my friends here, it has the opposite of its intended effect. We don’t want to see people giving up their lives and cultures to supply a foreigner with something they’ll forget about or throw away within a week, and we don’t spend our money on them in the hopes that it forces them to find something else. Our advisor has told us the same thing, and said that not giving these people money is the only way that they’ll be forced to find something else. It’s a sad reality, and something that’s, unfortunately, very popular within Bangkok.
