It's Loy Krathong! Some sort of lunar celebration based on the Buddhist calendar.

It was great fun, P'Noon and I and her housekeeper and "the kids" went to a parade at the university last night .

It was much like a night market with foods and shoes and tshirts and beauty products being sold along with hundreds of booths selling little flower 'boats' made of banana leaves, various flowers, a candle and several sticks of incense. For 30 B (90 cents) you light the candle and the incense and set your raft ('krathong') afloat ('loy') on the lake. Along with it go all your grudges and bad feelings of the past year and you are clear to start a new year afresh.

You can also buy a sky lantern which is a nylon bag (looks like a laundry bag to me) which is turned upside down and a candle is affixed to the open bottom. Soon your sky lantern takes off, sailing high up in the sky with thousands of others, taking your bad karma away on the wind. The sky is full of orange colored glowing lights and they seem to hover overhead until they catch a breeze. You can also have a sort of sparkler attached to it so that it drips bright little balls of fire downward as it sails . I wonder what the many folks who live in thatched roof houses think of this.

This holiday is a pyromaniac's paradise.

They also have basins of what look like bait fish but you buy one (or many) and release them into the water for making merit. In other words, you do a good deed by saving the fish. (Which they subsequently catch and sell all over again.)

We listened to the Dean of the University speak (boring, all Thai events start with long boring intros, which is why many people arrive late to said events), an Issan band playing ethnic instruments (not bad) , a pop band, and a beauty pageant hosted by a gentleman and a Ladyboy in a lovely silk suit, stockings, and high heels. Only his voice and exaggerated walk gave him away. Not that it matters;  I repeat, Ladyboys and homosexuals are totally accepted here, just like a third sex.

The beauty contestants were lovely with flowers in their hair, perfect makeup, bright silk dresses and the highest platform shoes you have ever seen, which they all wobbled on. There was a boy stationed at each step to prevent them from embarrassing themselves in a spectacular fall.

The Loy Krathong festivities will go on until Monday and then things calm down until December 5, the King's birthday which I gather is big doings. Can't wait.
Hope my pictures upload.