Bangkok's Loy Krathong bandits

The annual Loy Krathong festival is Thailand’s great release, a day to symbolically let worries and misdeeds float away.

On Monday night in Bangkok, Thais will celebrate the Hindu-Buddhist festival en masse by the riverbanks. They’ll release an endless stream of floating floral arrangements -- with many of the rafts carrying a wee candle, a snip of hair to release accrued badness and a 10 to 20 baht gratuity to the great river goddess.

Then everyone will watch teenagers rob the water goddess blind.

Loy Krathong is payday for any kid willing to swim after “krathongs,” the floating decorations made of banana stalks or Styrofoam. By the dozens, kids bob in the river’s soupy grayness, little silhouettes waiting for the next 10-baht coin to float past.

Though Lumpini Park and Chulalongkorn University’s ponds get some Loy Krathong action, the best place to witness banditry is the busy Saphan Taksin pier.

The bandits there leave little money for the river goddess. They furiously snatch up krathongs, fingers rifling through orchids, sparklers and bits of ceremonially clipped hair or fingernails –- all to find one or two coins.

The boys are comically shameless, frisking krathongs for money seconds after they’re set afloat. Sometimes teenagers impatiently yank them from people who’re knelt in prayer.

One night’s haul can bring in as much as 3,000 baht -- about half a month’s pay for a menial Bangkok job.

Spoiling the mood

Loy Krathong is timed to fall on a full moon night, according to the ceremonial Thai lunar calendar. Beyond the festival’s twin themes of penance and respect for water, it’s an evening of stirring visuals. Many come just to see the river glowing amber with thousands of candles, each representing a person’s hurt or shame, each drifting gently towards the horizon.

By snatching up krathongs and snuffing out candles, the bandits definitely sap the light from this spectacle. Some also run a side business of re-selling used krathongs to new arrivals.

But the kids hardly qualify as Loy Krathong’s biggest bummer. That would be all the candle bits, Styrofoam crumbs and other debris seen floating in the Chao Praya the next day. Bangkok city workers sometimes collect as many as one million krathongs from the water. 

Raiding krathongs is definitely considered bad form. Each year, merrymakers grimace as their delicately arranged offerings are manhandled in plain view.

But the bandits’ Loy Krathong loot is hardly unearned. The bandits dive and splash in water known for absorbing untreated sewage and the nasty stuff from dead animals. So perhaps it’s fitting that bandits rely on the river goddess for a quick and dirty payday. Apparently she’s not so pure herself.