Festival of Lights

I don’t have my calendar marked with the many Thai holidays and events but it seems like I find out one way or another when something is going on.  How I found out about the Loy Krathong festival was by pure chance.  I was walking around Bangkok far away from where I live to look for cool things to take pictures of hoping I would run into the Chao Phraya River when the inevitable happened.
On a Saturday night I got lost walking aimlessly around an area of Bangkok where I had never been before.  It was around 7pm and completely dark around the area with wide streets of several lanes.  I saw some canals but I figured I was no where near the river so I decided to get a taxi.  I found a taxi but as usual the driver could barely understand my Thai or English.  He finally understood I wanted to go to the Chao Phraya River and he seemed pretty excited to take me there.  I had no idea there was any kind of festival going on but when we finally drove over the bridge I saw the following….

Looking to the Shore of The Chao Phraya River From the Bridge Towards the Shore

Loy Krathong Saturday Night

I was instantly excited.  I was figuring that I would be taking pictures of the same Bangkok skyline that I had many times before but now I had a bunch of cool boats and other stuff.  The taxi driver let me off across the Rama VIII bridge on the bottom under the bridge where there was a large festival with tents set up with various souvenirs, games and food.  There were also monks who were on loud speakers talking Thai about something.  There was a Ferris wheel and marry-go-round for kids as well as a giant screen set up to watch movies.

There was probably a few thousand people there on Saturday night which I would consider comfortably crowded.  There was a bunch of people with their tripods taking pictures which was a lot of fun because there were many cool things to take pictures of.   There were these very brightly lit boats (above) with spotlights as well as other decorations along with the aforementioned children’s rides which were also lit up.

A girl came up to me and had me fill out a survey while I was eating this fried spicy fish cake.  A surprising question I saw on the survey was asking if I was satisfied with the level of security.  I did notice a lot of security guards around the area of the festival and many police patroling the bridge and I wondered why.  I would find my answer when I went back Monday night.

I stayed from around 7pm to 9:30pm and then I decided it was time to go home.  I walked back towards the east side of the bridge looking for a cab and under the overpass which was deserted with a couple homeless people sleeping in hammocks.  I had a chance to take a couple cool pictures from under the overpass which was the onramp to the Rama VIII bridge above.

Loy Krathong Festival Saturday Night - Under the Rama VIII Bridge

Getting to the Loy Krathong Festival on Monday Night

I found out when I returned home from one of my security guards that the official Loy Krathong wasn’t until Monday night so I planned to go back. I then realized that all the cherry bombs (fireworks) I have been hearing for the entire week leading up to Loy Krathong had to do with the festival.

At Monday at around 6 or 7PM I took the BTS to National Stadium which was as far west as the BTS (sky train) goes in hopes of catching a cab which would take me to the river.  I could sense that a larger celebration was in the air when I noticed that there are usually a dozen available cabs at any given minute this Monday there were maybe 1 every 5 minutes!

I was thinking there were many people going to the Loy Krathong festival as I walked occasionally turning my head over my shoulder and not seeing any available taxis.  I decided I would walk all the way there, which turned out wasn’t going to happen.

Krathong Raft

I was walking over an elevated street crossing when I saw a farang (foreigner in Thai) who I asked directions to.  I started talking to the farang who happened to be a transsexual woman originally from my home town of San Francisco!  He/She? recommended Chiang Mai which reminded me that I hadn’t been so I booked a ticket the week later!

She told me to get in a cab to take me to the river because it was far and I decided to cab it.  There was still not a single cab available so I found a tuk tuk who charged me 100 baht to bring me to the festival.  As I rode in the tuk tuk towards the festival I noticed there were many people lining the khlongs (canals) eating, lighting fireworks and of course their krathong.

I’m not going to explain the whole tradition of the festival but you can in the wikipedia article which explains the significance of lighting the krathong rafts (right) and releasing them in the canals and rivers.  It took around 15 minutes through and around traffic in the tuk tuk to get to Rama VIII bridge where the festival was being held.

Under East side of Rama VIII Bridge Looking at Loy Krathong Festival

Cool Scene Under Rama VIII Bridge Onramp

Loy Krathong Festival on Monday Night

Once I finally got to the festival via tuk tuk I noticed that the deserted area from Saturday night where I took the above pictures was completely packed with people like a can of sardines.  I now realized why the question about security was on the survey I filled out on Saturday.  Mix together crowding, burning hot air balloons (very top pic), cherry bombs, kids swimming in the river and people walking amidst traffic on the busy bridge I’d say security was a definite need.

There were at least 5-10x more people at the same place on Monday night.  On the east end of the bridge there was only 1 narrow staircase for the thousands of people going up onto both sides of the bridge and the thousands of people who were trying to exit, bottleneck anyone?  I actually felt pretty uncomfortable like I was about to get squashed so I went back to the top of the bridge and tried to hail a cab illegally in the middle of the bridge.

Down under the bridge was so crowded I didn’t even bother to go down, mostly because I checked out everything that was down there on Saturday and because it was super crowded.  It was very smoky in the air as people were lighting their paper hot air balloons (pictured at very top) which would burn in the air.  Police were actually catching people and making them stop lighting their balloons but many people got them off where they would burn in the air, crash in the river where cleaning crew boats awaited.

The air was completely filled with ashes from all the burning of the krathongs and balloons as you can see in the video at the bottom.  I still thought all the boats with spotlights and brightly colored designs were cool but after a while I just wanted to get away from the crowd and terrible air.  I failed to hail a cab on the bridge and failed to get through the crowd so I ended up risking my life and walking on the bridge on the side of the highway but I was not alone.

Walked on Bridge Back from Loy Krathong

Overall Impression

I though the Loy Krathong festival was very cool!  I saw pictures from smaller cities in Thailand and their celebrations looked just as impressive if not more as the giant capital city.  There was plenty to do for the entire family and many opportunities to take some great pictures which you can’t get every day.  Since I was there on Saturday night I didn’t want to say the whole night on Monday so I had a rough time leaving when most people were going to the party but I would recommend anyone who visits for the Loy Krathong festival to go on Saturday or Sunday if they don’t like sometimes suffocating crowds and go on Monday if they want to spend the whole night celebrating with 1/2 of Bangkok.