Yesterday the Thai people officially officially celebrated Loy Krathong. This beautiful festival is celebrated on the full moon on the twelfth lunar month of the Thai calendar. We were fortunate to celebrate this at our hotel last Friday. The Bliston put on a Loy Krathong themed pool party for all of their guests. It ended up being one of the highlights of our trip.
Loy Krathong is an ancient festival with origins deep in Thai history. During the festival krathongs or rafts made of banana leaf and bamboo are set afloat on water lit by a candle “loy”. The krathongs are adorned with flowers such as marigolds and orchids and sometimes incense. The purpose of this is to pay your respects to the river which brings life and make a wish for the new lunar year. The light and incense of the Krathong is an offering to Buddha. Sometimes people put a part of themselves in the Krathong they float away to symbolise anything negative in their life that they want “floated away”. You can read more about Loy Krathong tradition here.
The Bliston did a wonderful job of decorating their 5th floor pool area with fairy lights and thai decorations. They had Krathongs for each of the guests that attended which we floated in the pool to close the night off. The staff got into the spirit of things by dressing up in 1940s costume which evoked an elegant Thailand of days gone by. They requested that guests get in the spirit by wearing a hat. We got in the spirit and picked up a couple of party hats from MBK. I’m glad we did because not many of the other guests did.
In addition to the decorations the Bliston put on a spread of fantastic Thai food such as pad thai, fish cakes, spring rolls and fresh fruit. They even kept things authentic by bringing a couple of street food carts poolside making fresh kanom krok (warm thai coconut cakes), lollypops, and an assortment of grilled sausages, fishballs and satay sticks. The food was fantastic and what was even better was the FREE Chang beer!
The entertainment consisted of carnival games and a staff fashion show/competition. The games were a bit of fun and we even scored a couple of prizes which were nice and completely unexpected. The fashion show was gorgeous! Some of the staff involved were very shy and embarrassed to strut their stuff – they were the ones that got the biggest cheers from me. I got my picture taken with the only male participant (Mario from Security) who looked remarkably like Psy of Gangnam style fame. It turns out that the real Psy performed at the Siam Paragon yesterday for Loy Krathong….shame we missed him by a few days.
For me the best part of the night was seeing the smiles of the staff. They were genuinely so happy to be there and to share their culture with us. Our doorman was especially fun – I swear he was trying to get us drunk because everytime we turned around he was there with another beer for us. We got our foto taken quite a few times by the staff, it felt a bit like we were the celebrities!
After we floated our Krathong (and our worries) in the pool, the staff insisted we all get in a big conga line and do a lap of the pool trying our hand at a traditional Thai dance to the Loy Krathong song. I was actually singing the song in the end (very poorly I imagine) because we’d heard it all night.
This was the second time we celebrated Loy Krathong in Thailand and I have to say I really love this festival and what it symbolises. It is a beautiful sentiment and I’m grateful to the wonderful people at the Bliston for sharing Loy Krathong with us.
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