Kathrong Festival, Ko Phi Phi, Thailand

We celebrated the full moon on our last night on Ko Phi Phi. The annual Loy Krathong festival is a time of renewal, forgiveness and hope.

One part of the festival is the act of setting afloat “kathrongs” to honor Buddha. A kathrong is a small float. The base of ours was a slice of banana treee wrapped in banana leaves and decorated with mums, and orchids.Our kathrong was a gift from the Phi Phi Hotel. All the kathrongs were hand made and each one was a little different.


The Hotel, like many businesses on the island, made a larger more elaborate float. It was nearly 5 feet tall. The staff spent the entire day working on it. In addition to an incredible amount of flowers, there were carved melons and papayas in the shape of birds, fish, and flowers.


Everyone gathered on the beach after nightfall and started the ritual of placing all of the kathrongs in the water.


It goes something like this: You place coins on the kathrong to insure future wealth. You also put pieces of finger nail and strands of hair in the kathrong to send away mistakes of the past year. Then you pray for the coming year, light a candle & incense, and place the kathrong out into the water. We watched as ours slowly floated away from shore with 100's of others.

It was a happy and deeply peaceful ceremony that we appreciated more than expected. We feared it would just be a group of tourists marching down the the water, but the entire island seemed to be participating. Couples were clutching their kathrongs like they were an actual representation of their future success. Families posed for pictures along the shore. Shop keepers were sprawled out on the floor assembling their own kathrongs. I am glad we were part of it.

Another part of the evening's festivities was the launching of paper lanterns or khom fai. Made of paper that never caught fire, they operated like an unmanned hot air balloon. There was a fuel source that was lit, it heated the air, hot air caused the balloon to rise. They looked delicate but somehow managed fly out of site in about 20 minutes. The lanterns were absolutely beautiful and were another way the locals set cast away their troubles.

The local kids couldn't get enough of the fire balloons and ran group to group immediately assuming control of the lighting process. They were much better at getting the fuel lit than the rest of us. Also, they let off such a yell of joy when the balloons took off they made it all the more fun!


The celebration went late into the night. We have no idea when the locals knocked off to bed. We closed the town the night before with the group from Island Divers so by 12:30 we were heading in to sleep it off.