Loi Krathong Festival-Our Night as Popstars

Hundreds out of thousands of flower boats which were floated away for Loi Katron

Note: We will do our best to make sure that the first picture in the post always links to the full gallery, while the rest will just link to larger versions of themselves.

Loi Krathong is a Thai festival to thank the goddess of water for the rainy season, and offers celebrators a chance to symbolically let go of all their grudges, anger and defilements to start life anew on a better foot. For us it meant these things, but it also meant an awesome party at our school! We arrived straight from Bangkok into the craziness, and as we were walking past tons of lights, with multiple sources of music blaring in the foreground, we felt as if we were walking to a rave or something.

Natalie with our first float

When we walked onto our school ground's we could barely recognize them everything was so decorated! There were tons of kids running around dressed to a T. Hundreds of little Thai beauty queens were running around, excited to perform or excited to be done performing. All of the costumes were so colorful and beautiful, and everyone was in a festive mood. There was a huge stage set up on the field, and we had fun watching some of the performances. It was so cute to see all the little kids doing synchronized dances, and some kids were so talented they blew us away! One first-grade girl in particular did two solo performances and she was so good, she had all the moves down pat and was so fun to watch. She even rivaled Britney herself! Graham and Matt disappeared for a few minutes, and came back with a surprise for the girls-they had gotten traditional Thai costumes and they looked so good! Graham totally got me, I had no idea! They looked great, I only wish we girls had gotten cool costumes too!

We were posing for this picture and the boy walked randomly and up-did us all!

We enjoyed running around with our friends, and meeting new ones, and were sure to give out lots of cookies on strings, a tradition for this festival. The highlight, however, was when the English teachers got up to do a song in front of everyone. At first we were all nervous and wanting to stand behind each other. But as the song progressed, we all got totally into it, like the true popstars we all are at heart. I loved looking over at Graham or Sel, or Marvin or Matt and seeing them having so much fun, smiling and singing their hearts out. We really fed off each others' energies, and it felt so cheesy, but soooo awesome! We looked out and all our friends-Tagan, Tom, etc, who had come to see us perform were there cheering for us, and we felt on top of the world, standing there dripping in sweat and kinda making fools of ourselves. But it was so fun dancing around, Graham and I were smiling so big when we came off stage!

Some of the food that was available... Yes those are cockroaches, etc...

After our performance we were invited to have a delicious meal with a big group of people, so much good food! Then Graham surprised me with a hula hoop for our anniversary, I loved it and had fun practicing, and entertaining some people who thought I was pretty goofy. Sasi and Dick, our coordinators here, gave us a gorgeous krathong, a piece of banana tree trunk ornately decorated with flowers and leaves. It was so beautiful I did not want to light the candle and incense on fire and float it in the pond! But, in order to get our wish granted, and a fresh start at life, we needed to float it away. So, we knelt down together and sent it off. It felt very special to be participating in such a celebrated Thai tradition.

Some of the beautiful Thai princesses

Afterwards a Thai superstar did a surprise performance. I never got his name, but I recognized a couple of his songs, and everyone was freaking out! They were all singing along and dancing like crazy. The parents were even excitedly fist-pumping throughout his set. We were invited by our Thai friends, Tan and Peetoom, to go dance at the front of the stage, and we moshed with a bunch of Thai's, it was great. At one point I guess I was doing too much hair whipping because a teacher came up to me and pulled me out of the mosh pit. For one song, I pretended to sing along and told Graham, Sel, Tan and Peetum that I knew the song and they totally fell for it. Haha, I got them pretty good. It reminded me of when my brother and I fooled our cousin (who is now a huge success at Stanford) that we could speak Chinese when we were like 10. So, we had fun dancing with everyone, even though it was super hot outside!

One of the best floats we saw

We got home to find that there was another party going on behind where we live, so we walked over and floated another krathong down the river, and made another wish. I hope this means we will have especially good luck! It was beautiful to watch our krathong, and all of the krathongs, float down the river, their candle light getting smaller and smaller.

We have been told from a couple readers that our posts are too long.... so bowing to criticism, that is it for now :) By the way... we have had over a 1000 hits, so A. We are very pleased, and B. You are in good company!