a synopsis of the festivities

the loy krathong festival is now officially over so here are some of the sights and sounds of the festival.

a parade happened at night on each of the three festival days. of course, doing this at night requires lights for the floats. so they have big cables attached to car batteries or to generator 'floats' that go along with the parade. the last night the floats were huge and elaborate. they were so tall that sometimes the huge tangle of power lines proved to be an obstacle. the solution to this problem was to have 2 bamboo-sticked assistants with little u shaped hook thingys on the ends. these people used this device to push up the wires so the float could go through! so crazy! shouldnt these people be getting electrocuted? oh, thai safety rules...i mean what safety?

over by the river is were most of the chaos goes down....if you can get over there. lots of streets were closed due to the parade so you really had to snake your way through. and the road by the river was a total traffic jam each night. the river was packed with people on all the bridges, especially the foot bridge which was ground zero for the massive amounts of fireworks - which sounded like we were in a war zone! bang bang bang all night long - and day too. there were people selling all sorts of roman candles and cherry bombs from tables on the side of the road! explosives for all ages! hooray!

there was also an area on a closed off road where people were launching balloons again. lots on the full moon night especially. but definitely not as many as we saw last saturday!!! that was way more peaceful and amazing than the river chaos.

everyone was also launching off little boats made of banana leaves and flowers with incense and candles. this was cool but not as cool as the balloons. there were lots floating down the river, but not all them were lit at the same time because the candles ran out.

on one of the nights we were at the river, we were strolling down the street and came across a vendor we wanted to try but had only seen one other time. ready? it was a bbq-ed BUG VENDOR!!! yes we all ate bugs and i have photo proof! we tried little crickets (salty), huge crickets (2 inches long and a little more gross, especially if you got a leg!), and meal worms (puffy and airy but a weird texture when you mushed them up). it was really not that gross. the little crickets were the least bad, and i ate quite a few of those. let's just say i was glad that i bought a bottle of water too!

last night we had dinner at a pretty fancy place for luke's birthday. it was called the antique house and was inside one (hence the name). the food was really good and we sat on the floor on fancy pillows. one thing we ordered was curry soup with frog! the legs were tiny and you had to eat them like a chicken wing because they still had a bone. pretty much just tasted like meat, nothing weird. getting home was quite crazy because of all the fireworks in the road and lots of traffic, but now we have lights for our bicycles! i wear my head lamp too for a front light and the tuk-tuk drivers by our house laugh at me! but i need the crazy drivers to see me - thank you very much!

tonight we are going bowling and some people we know are meeting us there. yes, we have a regular old bowling alley here!

we also went back to wat umong because luke wanted to feed the giant freak catfish for his birthday. here they are: