If you have ever traveled to Thailand around this time of the year, aka the end of November, everything you see here is going to be about the "Loy Krathong" festival. You'll definitely see lots of fairs, lights, lanterns, and more.
For at least a century, Loy Krathong has been one of the most beloved festivals for us, Thai people, and apparently mine too. Since I was a kid, we always participated in this special day in some way, either we just went to a temple fair or went to the river and floated our Krathongs. But, as I stated in my title, as time progressed, I sadly don't think that "Loy Krathong" is suitable or "good" for Thailand anymore.
First of all, let me give you the background of it.
This Thai word, Krathong, normally means a small basket. Here especially in this festival, is an offering we gave to the goddess of water.
Krathong is handmade by using a cut banana trunk as a base then decorated with various folding techniques of banana leaves and finishing up with beautiful flowers, incense, and candles.
Loy Krathong is a festival of floating "Krathong" to pay respect, thank, and apologize to the Goddess of Water, the Hindu Goddess Ganga or the name we call here in Thai Phra Mae Khongkha.
The tradition allegedly started in the "Sukhothai era" of the kingdom of Thailand by a court lady named Nopphamat. However, it is now known that the Nopphamat tale comes from a poem written in the early-Bangkok period. So, we are still in a debate about that.
Now that you get the picture of what Loy Krathong is and what its purpose is, I can now take you guys to the nowadays 5 variations of the traditional Krathong. That’s being created because we want to “look after” the environment more. Sounds good right? But I disagree and here’s the reason why I thought this festival was not as great any longer (even with the attempt).
Traditional banana leaves Krathong
As you can see in the pictures, the krathongs can’t always be made of only natural materials, nowadays people are using a lot of unnatural materials to make one beautiful Krathong. For instance, metal and plastic were used as staplers or needles. It’s bad enough to see so many news about animals being damaged by plastic and now during this time of the year, there are even more. One news that broke my heart is on the 27th Nov 2022, a green turtle died not from any outer physical damage, but from Krathong’s nails in her stomach.
Bread Krathong
No matter how people try to change the material of Krathong to be more eco-friendly to the water, i.e. the bread Krathong, the flower Krathong, or the fish food Krathong. It still never be good for the environment. Every year more than thousands of thousands of krathongs are released into the water and the water into “Hypaxia” means that there’s not enough oxygen in the water to keep it clean. The Bacteria in the water will take all the Oxygen to break down the krathongs. That leads to unhabituated water for any water creatures/sea life. This to me is basically mass murder for them. And they didn’t even do anything wrong.
Ice Krathong
There’s one kind of Krathong that is made just of ice, which, ok smarty pants, can just melt into the waters. However, in order to make Krathong, it needs to have incense and candles. That thing still pollutes the water. The color that is used to paint over the incense is usually filled with heavy metal ingredients, for example, lead, mercury, arsenic and chrome. Candles aren’t any better. They were made from Parafin, which comes from Petroleum.
Paper Krathong
Paper Krathong isn’t off the hook either. Once the paper dissolves, the ink on the paper still contained a bunch of chemicals and heavy metals. These things can’t be dissolved and they will take over the food chain.
Krathong Dumpster
Lastly, given that all the krathongs were taken offshore, they will all still be taken to the dumpster. As I said, these are not just one, ten, or even a hundred, but there are thousands and thousands of them just lying there, waiting to be decomposed in millions of years. During that time, they are producing Methane, the gas we all know for the climate change and global warming crisis.
So, here’s my question. Why are we having Loy Krathong if everything we did is nothing but pollute and damage water and the ecosystem? Why are we even trying so hard to come up with these different kinds of Krathong? Is it just for the sake of getting to “Loy Krathong” aka float it into the water? Is it just for beautiful candlelight romantic pictures? Are we even still thinking about the environment as we started in the first place?
Believe me, Even being asked these questions, there are still lots and lots of people who want Loy Krathing to stay because it’s “Thai Tradition” and “We Thai need to save it”, otherwise, it means that you don’t love your nation. In my opinion, wanting to change something in the country doesn’t mean that you don’t love it. On the contrary, it means that you love it so much that you are brave enough to stand up and do what’s right about it.
So, NomNomNoodle, what would be your solution to this problem that you raise? Hmm, I would suggest, we keep all the value of the tradition of taking good care of mother nature, but we change the way we show it. We don't have to Loy Krathong but we can still pay our respect by doing something else. We can keep the fair, the beautiful craft, and the time that family can use to gather, but instead of just blindly doing things just because people have done it before, we can actually do something newer, nicer, and actually eco-friendlier to our world.
This is me just praying to Mother Nature and just taking that mini Krathong back home and using it as a candle.
PS. I put the source for each photo I used except ones from Getty Image
That’s my post for this special day of Loy Krathong this year, guys. Let me know if there’s anything I could elaborate on for you to understand our culture more or any suggestions for us if you ever face the same problem. Until then…
Let’s stay true to what’s important and keep good traditions alive.
Khob khun kaa,
Nomnomnoodle 🍜