Friday night was the annual Loy Kratong festival, the second biggest festival of the year here. Girls dress up in traditional thai clothes, everybody goes down to the river after dark and puts a little basket with flowers, incense and candles into the water and makes a wish to the water goddess. It’s evolved over the years into something like Valentines Day for couples, the river looks very nice as there’s tens of thousands of these candle-lit baskets floating in the water.

Friday night ended with Marty and myself pished in some dodgy thai-only karaoke bar till 4am (until the cops kicked everyone out as bars are supposed to close at 1am). Marty got up and sang the Bee Gees’ “To love Somebody” in front of 150 drunken thai youngsters, which went down very well. I believe there wasn’t a dry panty in the house by the end of it. I didn’t sing of course. Pre-dawn saw us walking home greeting everyone we met with “Happy Loy Katoey!” (pron. kar-toy: thai word for a ladyboy).