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Last Wednesday was Thailand’s annual Loi Krathong festival: a holiday for dedicated to the rivers– mae naam, mother water— expressing gratitude for its life-giving renewal, and apologizing for using it and polluting it.

The holiday is celebrated by setting krathong (literally, baskets), carrying incense and candles, afloat on the river. Although, traditionally, every family would make their own krathong, in the age of consumerism, Wednesday’s streets were filled with vendors selling pre-made baskets, such as these:

The festival is to Thailand as the Fourth of July is to the United States– everyone comes out to celebrate it; I’ve never seen Bangkok’s streets so full people. An estimated 1.26 million krathong were released in Bangkok alone (down from last year’s 1.46 million, the decrease owing to an increase in the number of families and other groups releasing a single, large krathong rather than many smaller baskets). For myself, I joined up with a Sun (far left), Nam Pueng (to right of Sun) and a few other international students.

This photo was taken on the ferry we took out onto the river, near the Rama IX bridge:

The river, where millions of krathong were released, was also the scene of the holiday’s Thai-style parade. Countless ornately decorated boats (or floats, at it were..), each representing a different organization, went up the river, in a spectacular array of pyrotechnics, glowing neon and larger-than-life depictions of scenes from the Ramayana, such as Thammasat’s float, below:

Another random float:

According to tradition (of which I have more to write), you’re supposed to make a wish when you release your krathong. If it stays afloat (and doesn’t tip over), your wish will come true. Of course, I’m not a sentimentalist, and couldn’t even think of a wish to make, much less remember to make a wish while trying to drop a basket with a flaming candle on top into tumlutous water from a rocking boat such that the basket didn’t tip over… Although the candle went out immediately, the basket didn’t tip, and I suppose I could glibly note that, par consequence, I now have everything that I wished for. =)

The traditions around Loi Krathong extend beyond the river. Loi Krathong also doubles as Thailand’s version of Valentine’s Day, and couples who don’t release a krathong together often release separate krathong, with the belief that if the two float side by side down the river, the lovers’ relationship will be steady for a long time to come. Conversely, if the krathong drift apart, so will the two who set them afloat. Amusingly, Josh noted that he observed someone plunge into the river to reset the course of a wayward krathong with another’s. The Thais will also often include a little hair on their krathong, but to do so this year they would have needed to plan ahead, since Loi Krathong fell on a Wednesday, and it’s bad luck to cut your hair or fingernails on a Wednesday (in fact, some barber shops don’t open on Wednesdays).

Later in the evening, I had a chance to spend some time looking out from the roof of my apartment down onto the canal adjoined by a park below. Out on the Chao Phraya river, where I released my krathong, only the most hearty of candles stayed lit for more than a few seconds, owing to a slight breeze and the multitude of boats moving through the water, tossing the krathong like toy boats on choppy seas. Unlike the Chao Phraya, however, few boats passed through the canal near my apartment, and I had the privilege of, for maybe two hours, watching hundreds and hundreds of krathong– only distinguishable as a spot of light in the darkness, floating down the canal as little beacons of light, looking something like (below), gradually tapering from multitude of little yellow lights to a solitary one or two where the glass-like canal joined the tempestuous river…

(not my photo)

My favorite part, however, were the miniature hot-air balloons that some people released instead: maybe two feet across and five tall (think the size of a 55-gallon barrel), they were basically bags made out of a super-light cloth with some sort of sterno-esque burner clipped to the bottom. When released, they would shoot up in the sky, a brilliant-yellow, fast rising explosion of light… going up countless of hundreds and perhaps thousands of feet in the air, becoming one with the stars before running out of fuel and falling back to earth…

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Of course, Loi Krathong wasn’t all just happy people happily releasing beautiful little boats into the river. Although down from last year’s 25%, an estimated 20% of the krathong released this year were made with a Styrofoam bottom, rather than the heavier, traditional banana-tree ring. Although the city did its best to clean the river after the festival (it is rather ironic, that they would apologize to the river for polluting it by… filling it with pretty pollution), I haven’t been able to go near the river or a canal without seeing the aftermath of putting some 250,000 pieces of Styrofoam into the river.

Like Valentine’s Day in the ‘States, Loi Krathong is a very popular time for young couples to go and shack up, so to speak (and is, I’m told, the most common day for a girl to lose her virginity). To try to counter this woe-some moral decay, Bangkok’s Minister of Social Development and Human Security, Watana Muangsook, created police checkpoints equipped with spotlights outside of 58 of Bangkok’s more popular hotels, with the purpose of shining a spotlight on young couples as they entered the hotel in order to embarrass the young couples into not having sex. (This came a few days after Watana’s proposal that wives “should prostrate themselves before their husbands to foster love and happiness within the family.”) This was not only is this an egregious invasion of privacy, but also an abuse of power well beyond Shanawa’s constitutional limits. Of course, no one does anything. They just say “yeah, that sucks. Too bad there’s nothing we can do about it.” And, of course, this is all taking place with the Prime Minister’s sanction: PM Taksin has become natorious for his frequent and drastic cabinet re-shuffling, but Shanawa’s position seems to be quite secure.

Last weekend Nam Pueng took me to her “village home” in Ayudthaya, which is 80km or so north of Bangkok. The trip itself was enjoyable, and I especially enjoyed feeling like I was actually in Thailand. There are pictures here:
http://www.eateggs.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=521

I owe an account of last Wednesday’s Loi Krathong festival, in addition to the latest list of governmental abuses, but it’s getting late, and I need to get up early, so I’ll leave off here.

As the holiday season approaches (or so my calendar says– you wouldn’t know it here!), I guess it’s time for me to announce I will not be participating in Christmas this year, for several reasons. Obviously, there is the logistical issue to consider, and my dislike for the holiday in general, but I think there is something more to be considered this holiday.

I don’t want to turn this into a guilt trip (which is isn’t), so I’ll simply state that: I will be taking the money that I would otherwise have spent on Christmas this year and donating it to an appropriate organization (or, as is my hope, applying it more directly in January). Similarly, I ask whomever of you to likewise; if you would have bought me a gift, I would ask that you instead make a donation to an organization that is participating in Pakistani humanitarian relief.

Thanks.

Edit: As a related note, for those of you who don’t already know, I will be flying home on April 5th, 2006.

When I return to Montana State in the fall of 2006, I will live on campus, hopefully in Quad E. And if you’re reading this, odds are that I’d like you to live there, too. Here’s a few of my reasons:

In short, living off campus this semester has made me realize how much I loved living ON campus. Specifically, the community on campus is something that can never be replicated elsewhere. In truth, living in the quads strikes me as a sort of utopian community: people living, playing, studying, sleeping, recreating… and doing it all with mutual respect (except for LBU, of course =P), helping each other along with that extra cup of coffee at 3:00am, or that warm smile and easy laugh at the end of a shitty day.

Admittedly, given the choice between living in the Hedges and off campus, I’d choose off campus in a heartbeat: Hedges is a lot like an apartment with more rules, not a utopian living community where everyone knows and loves everyone.

Living in an apartment sucks, really. Granted, I have an awesome roommate, but not even the best roommate in the world can, in and of his/herself, equal the company of the community of 23 fellow quadlings. My roommate and I live in a locked concrete room inside of an anonymous concrete building of strangers– strangers who, even if you do happen to see them occasionally in the elevator, couldn’t be spared the time of day. There is no community: only isolated individuals 24-hour security stack of cement shoe boxes. I miss that sense of being with like-minded people, being connected, having a community and a home. I’m going to live the rest of my life in an apartment, for all intents and purposes.

No-where off campus can you organize an impromptu game of Ultimate and be playing in five minutes, or play No-Holds-Barred. At present, I don’t even have a yard, much less a big, grassy and well-lit courtyard where to have epic snowball fights, build colossal snowmen…

I want a piano. I can’t afford a piano. I can’t move a piano: if I tried to tie one of top of my car, I’d end up with a lot of broken class and a big bill from the auto repair shop. I’m probably not going to be able to find a piano off campus, much less a place where I can play at 3:00am without bothering people (too much, that is).

And then there’s the question: why NOT live on campus? In response to the most obvious answer: most of you will be 21 next year, anyway. Yeah, maybe money: but for me, by the time I buy the essentials: a refrigerator, bed, 27″ television, DVD player, dishes, cooking equipment, desks, chairs, etc, any financial incentive is gone. Even in a fully furnished apartment, things like TVs and cable internet don’t come cheap, and there will never be ten couches to hold you and all your friends on Monte Python night. Getting rid of LBU? Yeah, well, you have a point there, but it might be easier to convince him to move than for everyone else to move away from him. And food? Yeah, food service isn’t five star cuisine, but it’s generally edible, healthy, cheap and plentiful. Cooking takes time. Fast food is expensive and unhealthy. I’m taking a full course load and working part time, I’m not going to want to be worried about cooking myself three meals a day. Being able to just walk over to food service, get some grub and keep working is priceless.

You can’t beat the location. You’re two minutes away from many of your friends, in the middle of a huge intranet which lends itself perfectly to impromptu lan parties, you’re five minutes away from class, and if you work on campus, like I do, you’re five minutes away from work. At present, I spent at least an hour of my day just going to and from campus. And naps between classes? Forget it!

Granted, in terms of activities, you can do everything off campus that you can on campus, but everything off campus requires so much work and planning. You want to play ultimate? Fine. Call everyone you know, and hopefully they’ll be willing to drive to the park. Or… go stand in the Quads courtyard for five minutes with a frisbee. Consequently, at best, I’d play a mere fraction of the games off campus that I would living on campus.

I also miss feeling connected to campus. Thammasat feels more like a job than a university: I go, put in my hours, and go home. University events, rallies, sports (football!!), all of that… doesn’t really exist for me right now. I’m off campus, displaced from campus.

There’s nothing special about living off campus: I’ll have the rest of my life to live off campus. As a matter of fact, after next year, I’ll never be able to live on campus again (unless, for some strange reason, I did during grad school, but that would be just a little strange). Rather, I view living on campus as a sort of wonderful once-in-a-lifetime experience: something that only comes once, and if you miss it, it’s gone. I don’t intend to miss it, and I hope you’re there to share it with me.

As much as I often sometimes (ok– often) complain about my classes here, I must count myself as being so grateful that I’m not in any of the many other classes that I walk past where the teacher sits at the front of the classroom and, in a monotone, speaks into a microphone. Half the time, it seems like the teacher is reading, rather than lecturing, and just sitting OUTSIDE of the classroom leaves me feeling quite bored. By comparison, my classes are all wonderfully interesting.

I went to Kanchanburi again last weekend with my Thai language class for a “language camp” of sorts. We spent two days in Erawan National Park, which is the Yellowstone of Thailand, so to speak. The highlight of the weekend was the fifteen or so minutes that I had to myself while (waiting for the rest of the group to return from the waterfall) spent basking in the sunshine in the green grass in front of my bungalow. I miss the sun, really. It’s not the same in Bangkok. And I miss the quiet. And that sense of, after a fashion, oneness with nature. And for fifteen minutes, I had that. Quiet. Rest. Nature. Grass. Sunshine.

This is the 7th tier of the waterfall that we hiked up to: (–which was wonderful in and of itself– to be hiking. Using my legs. Walking through trees. I miss that.)

That aside, it was more or less what one would expect out of a language camp– language activities, Thai food, etc. I was with a fun group of other international students, which made the trip enjoyable. It would have been even better if I had slept on Friday night… by 11:00PM on Saturday night the Thai language activities were beginning to lose their appeal.

We also did a Thai cooking activity, which was a pleasant confirmation to me of the fact that Thai cooking is just a matter of having an intuition of knowing how much of which sauce to add to what meat. If I were to write a book, patterned after Nietzsche, it would be titled: Thai Cuisine, or How to Cook With a Blowtorch.

We passed the three hour bus ride back singing songs that we all knew. Even though, at one point, we were forced to resort to the Backstreet Boys, it was quite delightful. =)

As an observation that will receive no explanation, I might remark that too often the best of intentions are killed for an excess of thought and a want of action– but equally worthless is an excess of action and a want thought.

The end of the semester is coming up quickly, which means that I may actually be pretty occupied with schoolwork over the next few weeks, with end-of-the-semester essays and the like coming due. I have a research paper due tomorrow for my 400 level British and American Thought class. I … read the prompt this morning. It’s 2:50PM now. I’ll get started on it… sometime. Yeah. Some things never change. =)

It seems to me that all I ever write about is my laptop, and I’m hesitant to write about it on that basis, but I suppose I will anyway. So I’m on motherboard three or four or something, and my volume control buttons don’t work. It’s not really a big deal to me– of course, it would be nice if they worked, but being forced to —horror— click on the volume control is an endurable torture, and there’s nothing else wrong with the laptop. So I’m torn. Part of me thinks that its a shameful waste to have Dell replace the motherboard yet again just because a couple non-essential buttons don’t work– motherboards are not cheap, after all. But on the other hand, I’m really frustrated by the fact that, three motherboards later, I’m still having problems– the same problems that I’ve had with the previous three. So I dunno what I’m going to do. Ug.

Well, that’s about the news around here. It’s still quite warm, although cooling into the mid to upper seventies in the evenings.

Oh, did I mention? I discovered an amazing video store near campus– just a little hole in the wall, really, but with literally thousands of titles and a huge selection of independent foreign films. I’ve never encountered a video store (netflix aside, of course) in the ‘States that has a selection half as good. For example, they have an entire Clint Eastwood section– like fifteen or so Eastwood films. And international films– Fellini, Rossellini, Godard, Bergman, etc. Anyhow, after class today, I’m headed yonder there with my film-guru Modern British History prof, and he’s going to give me “viewing assignments” of sorts. If I don’t write an essay tomorrow, I’m thinking I may just shut the shades and go for my first movie marathon of the semester. Speaking of which, tomorrow is Friday. Huh. How cool.