Bye Bye Sins

Claire & I are in Bangkok again and will be until the week before Christmas, I'm enjoying the chance to be back here again and as an added bonus take in a couple of national festivals that I missed last time.

The first was Loy Krathong festival, which was last night, the other is the King's birthday which is in a couple of weeks.

For Loy Krathong people gather to launch small banana-leaf, flower and candle/incense boats onto lakes and rivers, the boats are supposed to contain the individual's sins of the last year and after floating them down the river one can start afresh again (on a whole new set).

We launched our little boats and then enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere on a calm, relaxed evening.
We went to the main park in Bangkok and watch hundreds of families gather, pray and launch their boats in a loving manner. There were rich families and poor families, many who were obviously economic migrants to Bangkok from the poorer parts of Thailand. Also in attendance were young Thai students, and the occasional too cool for school crowd. I like the fact that these traditions are still alive for all people and don't attract the cynicism they would in Australia.

After a little time the lake had hundreds or thousands of candles floating upon it.

Beach Review

Well, we managed to make our way through a good number of Thailand's islands, those that remain will have to wait as there were storm, typhoon and other nature related problems.

Here's the low down, from best to worst:

Ray Lay beach - easily our favourite. The west beach is a lovely small bay enclosed by limestone caste cliffs on either end. The water's clear and warm. The development is low-level and back from the beach so is unobtrusive. Ray Lay is a very narrow peninsula, the East side is the least spectacular but has some very nice accommodation at more affordable rates that the West, and it's less than a five minute walk the West beach, we stayed here. Apparently there's excellent rock-climbing here and other delightful beaches too - we, however, failed to explore as we delighted in plonking down on west beach morning and afternoon (skipping the noon sun) and just unwinding. (The photos are from Ray Lay).


Lonely Beach, Koh Chang - not so lonely but still very nice. Most of the good things as with Ray Lay but not quite as good.

Long Beach, Phi Phi - a really long beach, white sand and warm water. The development's a bit intrusive.

Long Beach, Koh Lanta - a lovely setting, felt deserted and undeveloped because the resorts were low lying. Unfortunately rocks were everywhere under the water.

Main beaches in Phi Phi and White Sand Beach, Koh Chang - don't bother, over developed and there's lots of rubbish too.

For the record, we didn't get much sun but it was warm, didn't rain and we got to the beach every day. Very relaxing.