Loi Kratong: Banana leaves, boats, and discarded body parts

If last week was supposed to be the moment of shedding all the bad luck of the previous year, well, it looks like the gods have decided to scoop an extra helping on my plate for this year right from the get go. Like some sadistic lunch lady of bad karma, this has been a tough week of bad luck.
Last week was Loi Kratong, the festival in Thailand where people build small boats made out of bananas and sugar cane stalks and sail them down the river. Now, these aren’t just empty vessels to race down stream. Some people go for the simple green leaf boat shape but for most Thai families the boat you build is more like an episode of “Pimp my Loi Kratong Boat”. The most lavishly decorated are covered with flowers, plastic hearts, bead work, ornate pins, and sparklers. At the bare minimum they need to have three sticks of incense, small coins, and discarded body parts. The coins are put in to bring wealth in the next year and the discarded body parts (a healthy sprinkling of fingernails and hair) are the physical shedding of all your bad ju-ju from the previous year. At the actual festival you can launch your boat at the riverside or hire a longtail boat to drive you out to the middle of the river where you can light your incense, birthday candles, and sparklers to give your tiny S.S. Bananarama a proper send off. The overall effect has the river glowing with smoke and the red eyes of incense sticks while above your head people are launching paper lanterns that give the same speckled effect to the night sky. The only way you know up from down is from the constant lapping of water into the boat on each side rhythmically reminding you that the longtail boat could fill and go belly up in seconds. You got to love that about Thailand. Each festival we have gone to has at least one moment of “Wheeeeee…this is fun” followed by a moment of “Wow, we almost just died in that boat” or “Jeepers, that firework almost blew off my ear” or “Hey, that tree is on fire.”
Well, we sent off our bad luck twice this year. Once with our friends from SUper English and once with our Thai neighbors across the street. Maybe it was the double dipping into launching the boats but I have not been having a good week.
It started with an eye problem (see: eye infection/allergies/pink eye/ glaucoma) that has made my eyes feel like they are being inflated from behind by a pressure hose. This was manageable thanks to glasses and constant blinking that I think students are mistaking for some type of cryptic Morse code to help learn English. To make matters worse my eyes are bloodshot making me look like some creepy prize bunny at the state fair.
This was followed by a bout of disagreeable food (see: tapeworm/ giardia/ food poisoning/ hours in public squat toilets that won't be discussed on this blog). All these trials have been minor compared to my Thursday night.
Now, I have blogged before about the dogs in our neighborhood and around Surat Thani. Some are just your typical third world fast breeding dogs that seem to swagger on every street corner dodging motorbikes, lounging in their own feces, and randomly chasing other dogs but for the most part not bothering humans at all. Other dogs are not so nice. One in particular lives by the furniture store that lies between our house and the houses of the other teachers that teach at our school. It has, on more than one occasion, chased Codie and myself down the street nipping at our pant legs and sliming our heels with its big scary dog drool.
So, now when we near the furniture store we get ready. We pick up a rock, swing our bike lock, or pull up a hood so it doesn't have the immediate thoughts of "Oooooh farang (foreigners)! Mmmmmmmmmmmm!". We're like a giant hamburger in a world of curry and pad thai. This Thursday night we had spent the evening playing a heated game of Apples to Apples and were on our way home in the rain getting closer and closer to the "giant evil furniture store snarling demon of doom" and we got ready. I pulled my coat up, took out my bike lock (the kind that is made of metal with rubber wrapped around the coils) and we began our descent down Amphur Road. Twenty feet away Codie gave the battle cry of "Ready?". I shouted "Ready, Captain" and swung my bike lock mockingly like a mace. That's when the night turned into a white flash and I almost toppled over my handle bars.
Had the dog jumped through the air and sunk its teeth into my cranium? DId an angel come down to protect me from Cujo? Nope. I had swung my bike lock, full force, right into my left eye. I'm talking "fully opened, hyper aware of dog" left eye. Codie stopped her bike and the outpouring of sympathy gushed out of her newly blinded husband with waves and waves of laughter. That's right. Codie came seconds away from having a pirate husband with a patch and all she was able to do was laugh. I guess that's the best first aid in a country where you need to laugh off many of the scary things that happen to you and smile at the craziness (rabid dogs and eye infections included). I'm not blinded but I think I'll stick to tiny rocks from now on when fending off Fido.