Loy Kratong 2010

 
“Loi Krathong takes place on the evening of the full moon of the 12th month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar. In the western calendar this usually falls in November.”

Wikipedia

The moon was certainly full that night :)

Here was an attempt to capture the bright full moon with no tripod, not too bad, well it helped having the camera jammed up against the wall.

To be honest here baby, I think you have the view out of all of us, not that you care of course, being only two and a half, you are now more interested in jumping fully clothes into the bath full of water.

Anyway, this was your only second loy-kratong and there was no way we were going to stay in, we had to go and ‘loy’ the ‘kratong’ (a direct translation would probably be ‘float-basket’). Usually the place to go would be the riverside temples, so that the kratong can be floated down the river. However, another popular place is ‘Suan Lum’s (huge) lake’.

We decided to head for Suan Lum, simply because we wanted to take you on the sky train…  (and it was close to our house)
 
 
  

Somehow you have forgotten how to walk, you now come in two modes, ‘sit’ or ‘run’, both are really tiring for both your mother and I, because we ended up either carrying you everywhere or chasing after you at full pelt (running towards moving cars seems to be your specialty).

The one station BTS (aka Sky Train) ride was a hoot, the crowd was not that bad and you were all bright eyed and bushy tailed :)
     
   
  
It was a good walk from the BTS Silom station to the main entrance of Suan Lum (there is large statue of King Rama VI), the street hawkers were out en mass, the delicious smell of food cooking filled the cool night air, while the colourful kratong added eye candy to the normally peaceful but plain square.

    
  
  
Not to repeat the same mistake we made last year, this time we bought our kratong early, we basically stopped at the very first hawker we saw, you chose the kratong, then we made our way through the gates.

It was a mistake letting you carry the kratong, no need to go into detail here, (after a minute most of the flowers were on the floor :) )

 

 
 
  
The organiser decided to re-create old bangkok, with people dressing like the olden days, there were also stalls selling traditional food, I quite liked the display boards explaining the past.

By far the stall with the longest queue was the ‘fortune teller’s’, anyway, after a couple of minutes we decided to ‘loy’ the ‘kratong’ so that we would have more hands to look after you :) Of course I no longer carry a lighter, so we had to borrow it from a ‘farang’ (a polite slang for caucasian foreigners) to light the candle and the joss sticks.

  
   

After the kratong peacefully floated away (we totally forgot to put some coins in the kratong… aaahhhggghhh). Your mother and I decided to have a walk around, there was quite a lot to be seen, but you were having none of it… so we decided to call it a night.









 
 
 
Before going home we decided to stop by Chester Grill (Thailand own QSR), then you decide to drop your special #2… haa haa haa, without a spare nappy, it was the correct decision to make a quick exit :)

 
  
In stead of going back by BTS, we decided to catch a ‘tuk-tuk’ instead, I never haggle (because I am just terrible at it), so in no time we were sprinting through Silom and Narathiwas. Luckily the traffic was very light, with all that fresh air it really helped us to forget that you were totally filled up with #2 :)