loy kratong

For about a week now, every night we've been seeing floating lanterns in the sky on our night walks. For the past few nights, there have been a lot of fireworks too. Then tonight we have a full moon so loy krathong has officially begun. Check out the wikipedia article on the holiday here for better pics and info... It's a pretty stunning celebration. And we have another night of it tomorrow with a beauty pageant, parade with floats and more lanterns and fireworks.

Tonight people put floating krathong (banana bamboo flower candle things) in the river. Loads and loads of floating lanterns are in the sky. Lots of people are setting off fireworks everywhere too. Not just bottle rockets and sparklers either but huge big fireworks are being set off by just anyone just anywhere- public safety nightmare but really fun and wild!

We decided to go see the lanterns floating in the river tonight. It was a crazy scene at the river and we weren't even on one of the central bridges.


Here's a lantern being (the hot air from the light makes it rise like a hot air balloon- pretty high in the sky!)

Sam "enjoying" the fireworks (there's a famous pic of me "enjoying" a parade when I was his age- we look a lot alike)

lanterns in the sky (the two close one's have just been released- all those other lights in the sky are lanterns in the distance- they float quite high), the lights in the water are floating on kratongs. And then the green one and a few others are fireworks- very beautiful.
Another kind of lantern