more chiang mai and loy krathong

note: i'm still using a french keyboard, so i might spell things wrong, and sometimes i won't put the ' in contracted words becaue it's in a different spot that isnt natural to get to, so just bear with me...

so yesterday was the main day for loy krathong. you send banana leaf boats (krathong) down the river with incense and a candle and its supposed to carry your sins away, so Gaelle, her "friend" Doon, Zoe and I all went to Wat Suan Dok to make our own, we figured that it means more that way than to buy one already made. So you take the stalk of a banana tree and cut it into disks, and thats the base of your krathong, and then you take strips of banana leaves and decorate the base by folding little lotus petals, or whatever you want, then you decorate it with colorful flowers and lotus flowers. the lotus flower were cool because it's just the bud, but you fold back the petals and then fold them over so that the petal tips are tucked under the base of the flower, and this makes them look like blossoming lotus flowers - or since ours were green with white centers, kind of like artichokes or something, but it was still cool though!! then we did lunch and came back to gaelle's place where she and alice, a british girl that gaelle hosted before i got here, napped. no fear, in that time i got nothing accomplished except a good freakout about how i have nothing to fill my spare time in the next four days here in chiang mai other than the internet ( i have a few activities planned each day, but with still getting around 5.5 hours sleep i have many many hours to fill) . so i've decided to rent a bunch of movies to fill my days when my activities are done, or when gaelle is teaching, or when you all have gone to bed and i have no one to talk to - i know, thats a boring solution, but at least i'll avoid anxiety attacks that way, so it works for me!! I thought again about going with Zoe to the city of Pai today, but its quite the drive (her mom's friend moogda would be driving) and it's pretty touristy up there and popular with the hippy crowd, so i dont know how much i really would have enjoyed it other than having enjoyed it for the reason of it taking up time and for the company. Zoe is awesome (i might have said this before, if so sorry, i just cant keep track of what i've written about here, in my journal, and in e-mails to people, so sorry if its repetitive!!), and has been a really great person to know here in Chiang Mai - she's here for the same amount of time, and even though english is her 2nd language, we get along really well and so we'll meet up again when she gets back from Pai to spend the last 2 days in Chiang Mai hanging out. Its great cause she lives in Lyons, so now if I ever go to france I will know someone to stay with and to show me around. anyway, back to yesterday, so gaelle and alice finally get up and we go to meet another french traveler friend of gaelle's, Arnoud, and send alice off to the bus station (she was heading to bangkok, which is unfortunate cause she was hilarious - but now i have a contact in liverpool too!). then we met zoe for dinner (she had gone to get a thai massage at the womens prison in chiang mai, they teach them and license them to do traditional thai massage and allow them to practice while still serving their time - for what i'm not sure - and that way they have money saved and a job for when they are released. if i decide to get a message i think i will go there, but i havent decided if i want to do that or not) and headed out for the loy krathong festivities. it was already getting pretty crazy, people lighting off fireworks, sending off komroy (not sure on the spelling of that, but they're huge paper lanterns) all sorts of crazy stuff. at first it was ok, it was kind of loud, but people seemed harmless, and the city was beautiful because along all the streets and in windows and on porches, anywhere and everywhere had candles. so we made our way toward the bridge so that we could send off our krathong, and then things started getting crazier. people were setting off fireworks all over the place, in the middle of crowds they would be going off at your feet, little little kids were setting them off, some would miss fire and go shooting off in the wrong direction...and for anyone who knows me well, you know i hate firework, i barely tolerate firework shows because i think theyre unsafe, so this just stressed me out!! huge homemade fireworks were getting set off that were basically ping pong balls filled with gunpowder - one was the loudest firework i've ever heard and blocked out the lights for a split second with its shock wave (or whatever thats called). we had to wait there until midnight though when gaelle's friend doon would join us. zoe and i were ready to get out of there, but we still wanted to set off our krathong together. so we finally met up, and found a relatively (key word) quiet spot and launched our krathong down the river. as we walked away a major fight broke out where we had just been standing, like, broken bottles, heads getting knocked around, etc., etc. so yea, the we went and got coconut ice cream (absolutely delicious - oh and i forgot to mention that before dinner we got rotee, which is the name of that delicious banana pastry thing i talked about earlier, except this time i got chocolate, so for that one they dont add the egg on top so it stays a little more like a crepe and then they drizzle chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar on top). i will say, that is one thing i will miss, at any hour on any day, all you have to do is walk along any street and find food, for cheap, that is delicious. but yea, so we finally made it home and i got to sleep, even though i was exhausted i still only slept 5 hours, and then managed to fall back asleep for another 45 minutes. so since 8 i've been messing around on the computer, e-mailing people, writing this super long entry, and yea, trying to figure out what to do today, when to do it, and more importantly, when to get movies, and what movies to get... : )