The Missing Of Loy Krathong

The most beautiful holidays in the world are the Hindu Diwali and Thailand's Loy Krathong.

These festivals of light celebrate the full moon night of the twelfth lunar month. I have celebrated Diwali in Lhasa Tibet with the Indian cooks of the Snow Dragon Hotel in Lhasa and Loy Krathong with my wives and children in Pattaya, Cahi-nat, and Sri Racha. Sadly this year I will once more miss joining them in offering a krathong or decorated flower basket to float down a river or out to sea.

"I float for you," my youngest son Fenway told me over the phone.

"I wish I was with you." Especially since I could stand with his mother and vow to be with her forever.

"You come soon, papa." Fenway is my superstar. Mam is my love.

My daughter Angie and her son Sunson clasp my heart.

I can't stop thinking about all of them; Noy, Frost, Fook, Angie, Sun Sun, Pen, Fenway, Nu and Mem.

This evening I will go down to the East River and throw flowers and coins under a full moon with Venus crowning the sky. I asked forgiveness of the goddess of water 'Phra Mae Kongka' for fouling her rivers and streams over the year. There were no 'khom loy' or floating lanterns in the night sky. Thailand is on the other side of the world. We share the same moon and I read the Loy Krathong's lyrics in the dark.

November full moon shines,
Loi Krathong, Loi Krathong,
and the water's high
in the river and local klong,

Loi Loi Krathong,
Loi Loi Krathong,
Loi Krathong is here and everybody's full of cheer,

We're together at the klong,
We're together at the klong,

Each one with this krathong,]
As we push away we pray,
We can see a better day.

A better day will come with the union of my family and me.

Chok dii.

Loy Krathong 2000

Loy Krathong 2001 I spent the festival of light with the worst girlfriend of Pattaya.

Three months earlier Bee and I met at a bar. I only had another week in Thailand. My next stop was Kathmandu.

In bed Bee said sadly, "Why you go mountains, when you can climb me?"

There were a thousands of reasons, but I answered, "I not go to Himalayas. I stay with you. It was a big mistake, but wew had a few good months.

For Loi Krathong she dressed in Thai finery.

Bee resembled a handmaiden to the goddess of water.

The Day After Loy Krathong

Loy Krathong has long been Thailand’s most beautiful festival with candle-lit balloons rising into a night sky illuminated by a full November moon.

Ten years ago I was in Pattaya. Few girls and women dressed in the traditional costume. The police banned fireworks and their marine patrols gathered the krathong offerings less than 20 meters from shore. No one was allowed to light a fire balloon, perhaps the most exotic image to grace a night sky.

Instead drunken Thais and farangs raced cars and motorcycles, as if to tell the water goddess celebrated by the holiday, “Yet mung.”

Angie's mother was up-country. We weren't a thing anymore.

Mam, my love, had broken up with me. She wanted to move on with her life, so I celebrated the romantic holiday with two beers and fell asleep dreaming of times gone when the world still appreciated beauty.

I woke without my traditional holiday hang-over at 7am.

There wasn't much to do on a Sunday, if you’re not reliving Kris Kristofferson's SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWN.

I got on my motors cooter and drove south to Ban Samae San. The traffic was light. The drunks were sleeping off copious intakes of whiskey.

Arriving at the outskirts of Ban Samae San I avoided the fishing village with its thousands of racks stacked with fish drying in the sun. The smell drowned out any other smell, for there are only two things in the world that smell of fish and one of them is fish.

I rode to the hill temple overlooking the undeveloped offshore islands. Not a single worshippers was in sight. I struck the bells with a wooden mallet and wai-ed my respect to the water goddess. Afterwards I descended to the navy pier. No one was there either.

The morning temperature was about 75, which was good summer day in Maine. I stripped to my shorts and dove off the dock into the crystal clear water. My balls shrunk to peanuts and my penis to a cashew. Only Cialis could revive them to normal size, but I was celibate these days, so I drifted on the current for several hundred meters and then swam back to the pier.

To be truthful it was a struggle.

But the water goddess forgave my year’s excesses, otherwise I’d make the Pattaya Mail as another farang suicide with a photo of me wrapped in a white sheet, but I wasn't ready for that, because even that year I had a lot of living to do.