Friday night

I went to a katong festival which was absolutely amazing! A katong is basically a little bowl made from leaves an flowers! In the centre there is some food like rice and a candle, they also put some hair and nail clippings of their own! Then they put the katongs in the river to float away! This is meant to represent them giving something back to the river as it gives them so much, but it also represents them sending the bad things about themselves away in the hair and nails! For the festival they create big katongs that are on a stage on the back of a pickup truck! They are very beautifully decorated with lights and flowers and pictures! In them sat a beautiful Thai girl and later all of the girls from the katongs take part in a beauty pageant! Each katong entered is matched in a parade and each katong has its own contingent of paraders behind it, I was asked to be in one of these and I was given a little katong of my own! It was so exciting ans so much fun! Later each katong has a dance which is performed on stage! Each bit of this festival was judged! Everyone was very drunk which was greatly amusing! There were also lots of fireworks, but out here they seem to just throw them all by hand which is rather disconcerting! I also got to release my own moon lantern which was nice! After the festival it was too late to go back to nuan's so I stayed at Cruell, the English teachers for the night!