The King's Birthday

I’ve fallen a week behind with my posts so this one actually covers what happened last weekend, not this past weekend.  I plan on catching up this week, so look for another post coming in the next few days.

A few of us spent the week scrambling around trying to figure out where we were going to travel.  We felt like we needed to travel because it was going to be a three day weekend in celebration of the King’s birthday and we didn’t want the opportunity of a longer than usual trip to pass us by.  However, after many failed plans (it seems that because of the day off people had booked trips well in advance and every hotel and bus was booked) we decided on taking advantage of all that Bangkok had to offer for the holiday.

Saturday, a bunch of us got together at the bus station and took a quick trip north of the city to the International Balloon and Adventure Sports Festival.  We had heard a little bit about the relatively new festival and decided to give it a try.  It actually turned out to be pretty cool.  We spent the afternoon doing some white-water rafting.  It certainly wasn’t the most intense river around but it was still a lot of fun.  

That night, the festival had a hot air balloon show.  I imagined this would involve them actually taking flight but it really didn’t.  What they did instead was light the balloon’s torches to the tune of various John Williams songs.  

It was really fun seeing these giant hot air balloons light up in sequence with the music.  Overall, it was a pretty nice day trip.

Sunday came and Bangkok was all done up for the King’s birthday.  People were everywhere.  All over the city people were gathering to celebrate and get ready for the night’s fireworks.  We wound up walking over to a park that had a big parade planned.  Somehow a bunch of us got separated.  My friend Lee and I were trying to catch up with everyone and wound up actually walking in the parade.  We are pretty sure that the people in charge of security didn’t know how to speak English so they just didn’t bother telling us to get behind the barricades.  It was very funny being surrounded by Thais while the two of us were so clearly out of place and holding beers as we walked.

Lee clearly doesn't fit in with this group

After we met up with everyone else we watched the fireworks show.  It was pretty awesome.  While the show was going on people began launching lanterns into the sky.  They are basically miniature hot air balloons.  A small fire is connected to a bag-like piece and the heat of the fire causes the bag to rise into the sky.  It’s really amazing to see these things start to fill up the sky all over Bangkok. 

I couldn't get a good shot of all of them in the sky but this is a close up of one of them.  They launch these things for every celebration.

We ended our night in the backpacking district of Bangkok.  This is basically a place with a lot of bars and a lot of foreigners.  It was a really fun night and the best part was that I was able to come home to my own apartment rather than a hotel room.