Floating lights and angry old ladies
Trip Start
Nov 07, 2005
1
4
75
Trip End
Nov 04, 2006
Bangkok,
Thailand
Thursday, November 17, 2005
So being back near Khao San Road in Bangkok I had heard there was a big festival so thought it would be pretty amazing seeing all these krathongs floating down the river. I was in Kao Look Chang 2 years ago when this festival took place and all the villagers came to the rescue centre to float their krathongs on the lake which was really nice. So I bought a krathong and followed the hoards of people to Chao Praya river. But I was naive. It was Bangkok after all, so I don't know why I was surprised that there were people waiting to charge you to either go onto a ferry and sail across the river to launch your krathong, or men waiting to charge you to lower it into the river for you. Call me old-fashioned but I don't think people should be trying to rip you off at a religious event.
I found a nice old man who was doing it out of the goodness of his heart (of the fear of Buddha) so after finally lighting the candle (which was pretty hard as it was windy) I let him set my krathong in the river and watched it float off.
I thought it would be a spectacular sight, everyone's krathongs floating down the river with all the candles lit, but there were so many boats going up and down the river that they all got pushed to the side and just ended up in a heap.
Somehow it wasn't quite as romantic it was in Kao Look Chang.
"Happiness" boat
Launching the krathong on a filthy brown river amongst thousands of people just isn't the same as floating it into a small lake in a tiny village in the presence of a handful of village people.According to Thai custom, people must keep their eyes on their krathong until it drifts out of sight as there is a belief that the longer the candle is burning, the better the next year will be.
Mine floated directly behind me under the bridge and ended up in a heap with the rest so I'm not sure what that means...that the next year will go backwards..?
During the rest of the night there were loads of celebrations in the park with the obligatory weird food stalls. I wasn't feeling too appetised by the weird black jelly looking stuff so I opted for a weird drink people seemed to be having. There were loads of bottles of different coloured liquids which I assumed were syrup, and the only flavour I recognised was strawberry so I just pointed to that. It ended up being strawberry syrup with loads of crushed ice and some fizzy soda. Sort of like a Thai soda stream I guess, but it was pretty good.
There was some hideous Thai Karaoke performed by little kids, who I'm sure were great singers, but Thais sing in a weird screachy-voiced kind of way. And the little girls looked like they'd been taken straight from American beauty pageants but with a Thai twist.
There was some traditional Thai dancing as well, introduced by a male and female duo who reminded me of people that introduce the Eurovision song contest as one spoke in Thai then the other translated (or tried to) in English.
Following that there was some sort of Burmese percussion thing going on which even the Thai people looked confused about.
Today I finally managed to find the elusive swimming pool on Khao San Road which you can pay to use (actually its not that elusive but I just never knew about it before) so I spent the day swimming and sunbathing on the roof terrace.
Another lit up boat on the river
Although most of my concentration was focused on hiding behind my book and sunglasses from this German guy I had met the night before. I managed pretty well until he spotted me just before I was about to leave, at which I made up a quick excuse about meeting some friends and rushed off.I went off to have what I thought would be a relaxing massage before I flew off to Singapore tomorrow and went back to the massage place I had been to the previous week, working on the assumption that the last one had been good. Little did I remember that this depends entirely on the masseur/masseuse, not the place. Last time I had a young guy, and guys on the whole, seem to be better. This time I had grumpy old woman who would not even crack a hint of a smile. As Thailand is known as the land of smiles this is pretty uncommon. I'd hoped grumpy old woman was just taking me upstairs, but no, she was going to be massaging, or as I now know, torturing me. I've had some old women massage me before and for some reason they seem to always take out their years of hardship and stress on me. This one was no different. I swear she had something against the world and was pounding it all out on my back. My squeals of pain seemed to make her do it even harder.
All the other Thai people in the room were making jokes and I looked at grumpy old woman and her faced never changed so I assumed maybe she was either deaf or some kind of machine. But miraculously, after she had finished her torture session, she gave me some hot tea and then smiled at me. I'm not quite sure whether it was a sincere smile or whether she was just happy she had got rid of all her worries by pumelling me. I'll go for the latter.
So instead of being relaxed before lugging my backpack round tomorrow I am now bruised.
Perfect.
xxx
