Tonight is the night of the Loy Krathong; the celebration of the full moon in the 12th month of the Thai calender. There is a large carnival starting just outside the old walls of the city, musicians playing gongs and drums, fire works are exploding all around. But all this pales in comparison to what is above, literally thousands of lanterns light up the sky. It reminded me a bit of some of the images of the WWII paratropper landings. I strayed away from the carnival towards the Buddhist temples to see the monks lighting their own Lanterns. Eventually I wandering through into the area where they were all being let off from. Some of the Lanterns were stuck in trees the flames licking the leaves. Other lanterns had strange downwards fireworks that you had to watch out as hot sparks fell on your head, sometimes there was a poorly aimed bottle rocket fired into the crowd. Then you had people that let their lanterns off before they had properly warmed up, this resulted in low flying lanterns grazing over peoples head. It was pandemonium, but the good kind. We fired up our own lantern and watched it escape towards the full moon.
From the Green Tulip Guest House you could appriciate the vast number of lanterns caught up in the wind. It looked like they were all flowing down a great black river. This Is a evening I won't forget and to think we came across this by accident.
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