Expectation vs. Reality | NOT What You See on INSTAGRAM 😂Thai Lantern Festival (Part 2)
Nate and Kara Buchanan join a local teacher at a Thai lantern festival, attempting the Instagram-worthy sky lantern release and river kratong ritual. The reality: windy chaos, fire hazards, and the awkward effort of actually lighting and launching the thing, plus the cultural practice of floating away bad luck with hair and fingernails.
Questions this video answers
January 4, 2019.
Toilet paper and kerosene.
20 baht.
"Probably, like, my fifth or sixth time."
Chapters
Oh, no.
Oh, my gosh. Just fireballs falling out of the sky.
I'm so scared. This guy's gonna catch a fire.
Oh, gosh. I'm stressed out.
We are so excited to be here during this magical time where they're celebrating the lantern festival.
But our preparation for the festival actually started yesterday.
Hello. Welcome to my classroom.
We're in Mr. Patty's class. What's your name? Martha.
How are you?
A B minus.
Now we have our katong, and we are about to head into the old city to join the festivity. It's probably the most beautiful ceremony that.
I've ever seen, but we're having extreme FOMO seeing all of the lanterns being released by the river. So that's where we're going.
This is exciting.
You can just see all of the lanterns originating from one place, and so there's just, like, a herd of people walking down this road in the direction of where all the lanterns are taking off.
I feel like we're in a parade.
It's absolutely beautiful. The atmosphere is fantastic. Everybody's happy.
Everybody's on the road. Even though the road's not closed, there are cars right here.
Getting crazier with every inch we get closer to the bridge.
This is beautiful chaos. When I picture the lantern festival, I pictured this really, like, serene moment where everybody was being really quiet and letting off their lanterns.
But instead, it's just chaos in the streets. And there's people that don't realize that you need to hold your lantern long enough for it to, like, fill up with hot air to go up, so they let it go too early. And then there's fire crashing down on people's heads.
It's very dangerous.
The whole crowd starts yelling like, watch out. Watch out. But it's in, like, 10 different languages.
I love it.
And it's just constant. You think eventually it would start to, like, fizzle out. Like, everyone would have lit their lantern and let it go, but, like, for hours, the sky has just been filled with lanterns.
So dangerous. Keep going, keep going, keep going.
No.
Oh, my gosh.
I don't think anybody was standing under it.
This is so much fun. There's. There's fireballs falling out of the sky. There's carnage all over the ground from lanterns that have gone out and just falling back down to earth. So much more exciting than I thought it was going to be. I'm secretly cheering for, like, all of them to crash.
I'm really nervous if it's going to get hurt or caught on.
Yeah, you got to keep your Eye on your back of your head to make sure it's not.
I was like, I'm not gonna let anybody catch on.
How do you feel that you sent a flaming fireball at people's heads.
That was a terrifying moment, but we were covering, and it is now somewhere in the sky. So we. That was a success.
This is probably, like, my fifth or sixth time. And it gets more and more scary every. Because there's so much pressure involved. Like, if this doesn't go up, well, my year's not looking good. So much unnecessary pressure. It's supposed to be a fun thing to do. I just take it so seriously. Even getting lit, it's like, oh, it's not lighting. Does that mean I'm gonna have a bad year? Am I gonna fall down the stairs?
What did you say this was made out of?
Toilet paper and kerosene. Toilet paper?
Yeah. You can see it's an old toilet paper thing. So I do the switcheroo, right? Yeah. Okay. Can you help me? No, no, no.
That. It was all going onto the flame.
It's gonna be a bad idea.
I panicked. I don't know what to do anymore. Well, what do you talk me through what you're thinking?
I'm thinking I'm gonna help you grab the top, and we're gonna move to. We'll each grab a side of the top.
Okay, let's go.
Bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.
Okay. Down to the ground. Down to the ground. Get low.
It's gonna be a good year.
Don't say that. Wait for it to go up. It's a bit windy now. Have.
Stressing out now.
Thank you. Thank God.
Please help me.
Okay.
I think I went to the crate.
No, no.
Oh, my goodness.
So good.
Scary. Okay, I feel much better now. This is so. I'm so overdramatic.
No holes. Okay.
Okay.
Well.
Looks like I should buy life insurance. I don't believe in this anyway, so it's fine.
The wind is against you.
It would still be able to work.
Now all the hot air's gone. Oh, well, I'm not too bothered. Secretly. I am.
You at it.
Okay.
Oh, gosh.
This is gonna end badly.
I'm feeling so much pressure right now. Let's try to flip it over, and let's take it down to the.
Okay, so far, so good. We're heating up.
We're gonna keep it out of the way, but as soon as the wind comes, it just crumples one of the sides into a plane.
All right.
Up, up, up, up.
It's Gonna catch on fire.
It's so much harder than it looks.
I don't like this at all. I'm not having fun. I want to let it go over there.
Okay.
Like, I want to walk it over there. Okay, we're gonna move. Let's go, everyone.
All right. They're playing a hole.
It'.
Do you think it's ready? Here it goes.
Three.
Oh, no.
Oh, here we go.
Here we go.
One. No, no, no.
Come on.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
Is it?
Yeah.
It's gonna be okay. Okay, back down to the ground. Back down to the ground.
Let's pull it up.
It's the longest lantern release in history.
It's gonna go okay. All right, let's try it. I feel like our light's going out already. We've been on the ground too long. One, two, three.
Go up. Go.
It's going up.
It's going up.
Come on, come on, come on.
Keep going.
Everyone's so disappointed in this.
The toilet paper that was in the middle that was catching on fire was burnt up by the time we actually let it go up into the air.
Yeah, we're noobs. Sorry.
Still going to have a good year.
So we float for our mistakes and we know. Be confident and let it go early. And just praise God. It goes up. No.
Oh, gosh. Wow. They join you.
Today. Don't catch anybody on fire.
Good night. See you guys. Okay. Good luck. Ready? Just let it go. Okay.
Let it go.
You will.
One. Yes.
Yes.
There it goes. Keep going. Keep going.
We're stronger together.
Yes.
Buy two.
Buy two.
Wait till the wind stops.
Anything else away from this video?
Oh, you make a wish.
No, I wish that it wouldn't catch on fire.
I need a drink.
So this is the thing about Loy Patong and the. The lantern festival is, yes, the lanterns are incredible and beautiful and. And fun and crazy. But this is the reason why I love this festival. The Loy Patong, the Thai part of this festival. I mean, just look how beautiful this is on the river.
They're all just letting their katongs go. There's no fire. It's just so.
Yeah. And we're gonna go do ours in a minute.
Yes.
Can you start doing this? The idea is you make a katong. It's 100% natural, made from bamboo leaf, and all the things that you saw when we made them in the classroom. But there is a few things that you have to add at the last minute, which is your incense, the candle, some human hair, like from the top of your head and fingernails and money. And the whole idea is that in Buddhism, they believe water is a blessing. And so by putting in your katong.
Are you okay?
It burned me really hot right now.
So Thai people believe that by putting this katong down. Down river. That's perfect.
Oh, really?
With your hair, with your fingernails and a little bit of money, you're taking away. You're sending away downstream bad energy, bad karma from the year before. And you are wishing for good luck and good fortune and good karma to come down the river. And it's overlooked because of the lanterns and the craziness. But this is why I love local summer.
So we have fingernail go first, and then I pulled out one of Nate's gray hair hairs.
I need to pull one of my gray hairs out too.
And we are completing our katong. I also have a lot of hair.
And actually, last year, I saw a guy downstream collecting all of the katongs. I mean, look how many katongs are flowing down here. It's been like this since sunset. And every single one has ten bars, twenty bars, maybe a thousand bars. I mean, there's series four right here. But of course, I would never do that. So 20 baht goes into mine.
You do not have gray hair.
Oh, any hair's fine. And can you do me a favor? I bite my fingernails and stuff? Yeah.
You're not leaving me much to work with here.
The key is don't fall in the river.
Yeah.
Wow.
It's beautiful.
Well, it's like, if you think of each one of these kratongs as a person, like, that's a person who has troubles, like, the same troubles that all these other people are going through. It's really cool.
How awesome would they be when they came back up on fire and a dragon went across the sky?
Yep. Deal.
Good man. Look at that.
So efficient.
Sorry about that.
Wow.
You partied? It wasn't mine.
That wasn't yours? No. Just get another one.
It landed right next to us.
It never happened. It never happened.
What didn't happen?
And a hot girl that I've liked for a while just asked me out, so something's going wrong.
He hasn't even put his kratani.
Not Ken there.
