Loy Kratong

Though holidays like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas have been exported to tourist destinations all over Thailand as perfectly justifiable reasons to drink a full bottle of Thai whiskey, in the Northeast (Isaan) the only exposure to our western holidays are through the English language classroom. Far different from the drunken, costume-less chaos of a Halloween in Bangkok, the school versions of our holidays still seem obscure compared to our modern day celebrations. The students are taught about ancient traditions founding the holidays that, perhaps, in our modern times we falang have all but forgotten about.

In the Thai classroom students learn about a Celtic Harvest Moon that brings out ghouls, goblins and witches out to haunt the town, a Halloween history lost amidst our trick-or-treating. Valentine’s Day is taught as an ancient Roman festival, during which single men and women were randomly paired together for the day as attempt to find true love. They fail to mention Hallmark gift cards, stuffed animals, and Hershey’s chocolate. Students learn that Christmas is the birthday celebration of a man some falang believe to be the Son of God. They learn of Bethlehem, and then are also taught about the addition of Santa Claus and the goodwill of giving gifts to family members, the sick, and the homeless. They say Christmas is December 25th though, and fail to mention that in modern practice, it is a month-long shopping spree to the soundtrack of jingle bells that begins the day after Thanksgiving and lasts until New Years.

What’s interesting to me isn’t so much our lost connection with the origin of our holidays (because isn’t that why we have them in the first place: to remember important dates that, in effect, preserve culture?) but more the Thai people’s preservation of their’s.

From a humble westerner’s perspective, Loy Kratong, the most recent holiday in Thailand, appears to have held its history and tradition intact without the addition of any superfluous decorations, or even the smallest rise in the price of the main pieces of the kratong (instructions on how to build below): flowers, banana leaves, or incense.

LOY KRATONG

Though not a new year’s celebration, Loy Kratong does mark an end of a season and the beginning of another. It occurs on the first full moon of November, a time marking the end of the raining season, when the bananas have been harvested and the rice is the next to be cut. Like our new year’s resolution, Loy Kratong is a chance for new beginnings. After people build their kratongs and set them afloat, they not only carry the problems and angst of the previous year but also, if one is lucky, they can grant a single wish.

Curious about the holiday I, of course, opted for full immersion into the spirit of the event. This means building my own kratong. Though entirely different from Halloween, I couldn’t help but feel similarities to the tradition of carving pumpkins I had missed only a week earlier. Though kratongs are made for an entirely different purpose, the act of building them out of banana trees and leaves took the same time, effort and creativity as carving a jack-o-lantern.

Though the children, Mon and Min, promised to teach me how to make my own kratong, Pee Meaw (pronounced like an imitation of a cat’s meow) taught me step-by-step, while the kids only looked on every couple minutes to add advice and support to my falang imitation.
It all begins with a heap of banana leaves and the trunk of a banana tree. A truncated portion of the trunk is the base of the kratong and first, we wrapped it in leaves, carefully cut to fit. From there the rim of the kratong must be decorated through one of many precise folding and pinning patterns.

Once the edge of the kratong is made “beautiful” then it’s time to start adding additional “levels” or just start adding flowers. I made a two-level kratong, though later when I covered it with flowers, the second level was covered completely and I wondered why I had spent so long cutting and folding banana leaves for nothing. Anyways, the point is to take your time making your kratong and to make it pretty, so I suppose making the upper, invisible levels is one of those things that you made because you know it’s there.

Once the banana leaf construction is set, then come some of the most important pieces of the kratong. Three sticks of incense stand in the middle of the kratong, along with one candle. Having both sit so close to each other, I wondered how the candle was supposed to stand without catching the entire sticks on incense on fire, so I made sure to put something between them to hopefully prevent any unwanted fires.
Around the incense and candle is an array of flowers entirely up to the builder. At first I thought building a kratong was an exact science, but as it turns out its as open to creativity as carving a pumpkin. The only real criterion for a kratong is that it must float. Hence our small tub of water, in which we took turns testing our kratongs for buoyancy. Though Min’s tipped over, soaked his incense and lost most of his flowers, my kratong floated comfortably (though it looked like a single wave would topple it.)

Once checked for buoyancy, adorned with all the banana leaves, flowers, incense and a candle, there are a couple final things one must do to ensure that their wish becomes true and the following year is a prosperous one. First, you must stick a coin in your kratong. One baht is perfectly okay, but supposedly, nine baht is the lucky amount. (I chose one baht, deciding it was a proper, modest amount.)

Along with the coin one must pluck a single hair from their head to put in the kratong as well. While I was having trouble getting one out, Min was quick to grab the scissors, ready to cut out a chunk of my hair. Seeing the excitement in his eye, I grabbed a little bit harder and yoinked a single hair from my head. Then, oddly enough, out came the toenail clippers. Min and I took turns clipping our nails and putting them into our kratongs, all for the sake of good luck. Everything in place, we then only had to wait for sun to go down and for the the full moon come up.

A family on motorbikes, that night we drove over to the largest body of water in town, a small resevoir surrounding our community park. A river is ideal for the holiday because it carries your kratong away down a path of good luck, but you have to use what you have around you and a large pond is all we had. Each with a wish in mind, we carried our kratongs down to the bank, and lit our incense and candles. As I had worried, poor Min's kratong troubles continued, this time his candle burning his incense down at the base, toppling the fire down to his flowers. Though I'm not overly superstitious, it seemed like bad luck to me though Pee Meaw, in true Thai fashion just said, "Mai bpen lai."

The candles and incense lit, we pushed our kratongs out to the water, put our hands together to pray for our wish, then splashed water to encourage the little banana boat out to sea. The kids watched their's float away making sure to see where it went, but I nearly immediately lost mine in the mix with dozens of others. In another Thai costume others lit off small bags rigged up as tiny hot air ballons. A paper bag with a small flame attached beneath caught the hot air and floated up and away into the night.

For everyone except Min, Loy Kratong seemed to go off perfectly and I truely believed it to be one of the greatest, most good-hearted traditions I had ever been a part of. It was fun to construct the kratong, and setting it off in the water had very spiritual feeling to it. But then, just as I was revelling in the purity, I saw some dastardly little teenagers, snatching up the kratongs that had made it to the opposite shore, and pocketing the coins that had been placed in them for good luck.