Loy Kratong at Babylon

So yesterday I completed my first week of teaching for the new semester. Hilary and I quickly hiked it up to Chiang Mai to meet up with Becky and Shawn. It turns out that Shawn randomly ran into his friend Pam from Salt Lake so she came along with us for the night. We ate Indian food and hung out near Taepae Gate where there were lots of Loy Kratong festivities. Loy Kratong is a holiday when Thais pray to the "water angel" of the rivers and apologize for polluting the water and thank her for letting them use her resources. They make these little boats called Kratongs out of banana leaves and flowers. They fill it with incence, coins and a candle. Then they float the kratongs in a river on a full moon night. We are going to the festivities tonight so I will get some pictures. The river will be full of a thousand little lights and the sky will be full of hot air lanterns.

So anyways, we met up with Nadine and ended up at the Rasta bar called Babylon. There was a Thai reggae band playing and the singer was soo cute with long dreadlocks and a voice like Bob Dylan. Hilary, Nadine and I started dancing and suddenly the whole place was on its feet. We were dancing with the cutest little Thai girl who wore antennae on her head and tried to steal my scarf. I ended up giving her a bunch of glitter instead :) Well we spent the night dancing, laughing away with various international travellers and making tons of new friends. It was such a great night. I feel like I've been having more and more interesting experiences lately. I'm just happy in general. Shine!