Megaboom

Loi Loi Krathon, Loi Loi Krathon... The Lantern Festival! Light a kom loi, make a wish! Float a krathon, feed the river gods! Decorate your front door sweetly, be nice to all your friends! Stock up on explosives and whiskey though, you don't want to run out.

The parades are long but they are pretty. See the giant blue glittery cloud decorated with swans and umbrellas that nestles a little girl dressed in red and gold who can hardly keep her head up because her face is so thickly laid with eyelash glue, lipstick, and meters of fake hair. A cable on the back of the float connects to a truck following closely behind, bearing a large generator that cloaks the street in an ethereal diesel mist. The traditional bands carrying gongs, very long drums, and boys who dance/fight with cymbals, are usually drowned out by the 10-speaker sound systems. And so on for two hours. Great costumes, smiling people (how do they smile for so long? Vaseline), epic dancing.

The day after, school has the afternoon off to make krathons, which are offerings to the river made of folded banana leaves and decorated with flowers, incense and candles in the shape of a lotus. The idea is to put your wishes on the krathon, light the candle and push it into the river, where it floats downstream, all the way out to sea probably. My 7-year-old friend Bandok (on the left in the picture) and I struggle through, doing our best to make something beautiful.

Interesting story I heard about the origins of these floating offerings; the original city was settled a few miles downstream of the established Chiang Mai. There was a horrible virus that started killing everyone off, a kind of bubonic plague situation with the sick packed into areas separate from the village. Of course quarantines are tricky when your walls are made of bamboo leaves, so the uninfected people were left with few choices. Those that could, left. They left their families behind and took boats upstream to start a new village. This village was extra clean and healthy, and everyone was happy with their new lives. But they didn't forget their sick relatives, and knowing that they were struggling, every full moon they sent down boats built from banana trees filled with provisions. And so, krathons for our ancestors.

Two days after the first parade, there is another one. They told me, “It's like the last one, but bigger!” Indeed. Now they are driving more elaborate floats with 3-storey castles stuffed with beauty kings and queens, smiling for all of Siam. Even the Night Safari crew rocks up (marketing tagline: you can eat anything you see! They had to keep a low profile shortly after they opened when a pack of wolves escaped and was spotted prowling the streets of Chiang Mai) with horns tied to their heads and feathers tickling the noses of onlookers. I get a very good look at them when the parade stood still for 20 minutes. Then I get a little restless and walk up a little towards Nakorn Ping Bridge. I watch a big-bellied man drenched in glitter rub a gong for another 10 minutes or so. There is a big explosion behind me and everything goes quiet.

But then everyone remembers, ha ha ha, it's Loi Krathon! Explosions are good luck! Then all the power along the river goes out, but they were just kidding because it comes back on after a couple minutes. By this time I am jammed into a crowd of drunken Thai boys, cheek by jowl. Bring on the groping. I'm talking full on free for all grope time. I decide that it's worth heading home at this point, as the only white girl in the heaving whisky-scented mass. This takes a LONG TIME because all of Chiang Mai, and any lucky evacuee from Bangkok, has congregated at this intersection and is trying to get somewhere. Finally I am spat out onto the bridge. Keep eyes out though, they tell me that falang often find firecrackers under their feet.

The next morning, I go for a run. The charred corpses of kom lois are caught in trees, crumpled on street corners. The river is speckled with bottles and firework canisters. I think that if I liked loud noises and dreadful amounts of booze, this would have been a brilliant festival. But, but. I do like things that light up with lots of colours, I like things that float in the sky and in the water.

Bring on New Year's.