Loy Krathong is one of the biggest festivals celebrated in Thailand. It takes place on the evening of the full moon of the 12th month of the Thai lunar calendar. The word Loy means to float and Krathong is the beautiful creation often made of banana trunk and leaves, decorated with flowers, candles and incense sticks, that Thai people float into rivers, lakes and the sea during the festival.

It is done in order to ask for forgiveness from the water goddess who provides water for every living creature but has to endure pollution and disrespectful treatment from humans.

Students and staff at Lanta International Language School joined up to make our own Krathongs for the evening. Our receptionist Nita had prepared pieces of banana trunks, leaves, flowers and candles and did a great job in instructing us how to put together our creations.

When we were finished some of us went to Lanta Old Town where the biggest celebrations take place on Lanta, but others stayed on Long Beach or went to Saladan to let their Krathongs float into the sea.

Our Intermediate Course student Oskar won his first Thai boxing fight yesterday at William's Thai Boxing Stadium. He impressed us all by doing the traditional Wai Kru ritual dance before starting his fight. The Wai Kru is done to pay respect to the trainer and very few foreigners learn this dance.

The fight started.

Our (alumni) Proficient Course student Sharon got the last fight of the evening, they started around midnight. She had plenty of time to get nervous, but she handled it well.

Unfortunately Sharon got a really hard kick in her stomach that made the judge stop the fight. She was angry with herself that she couldn't continue and automatically lost, but after a few minutes of rest she was looking forward to the next fight.

Our Intermediate course student Oskar and our Proficient course graduate Sharon will participate in the Thai boxing fights on Sunday at William's Thai Boxing Stadium (next to William's Fitness Center). As everyone at Lanta International Language School knows both of them have been training very hard for many months. It will be the first fight in Thailand for Oskar, but Sharon has fought several times already on Lanta as well as in Phuket.

Students and staff at Lanta International Language School are now preparing for the 2012 LILS Beach Volleyball Tournament. The teams are set up and we practice down at Long Beach as often as we can. It's great fun and a good way to relax from work and studies.

Thai people use the word farang when they mean foreigner, mainly foreigners of European descent. As most of our students are farang we have printed that word on our school t-shirts. It's a great conversation opener and even the shyest Thai person will crack up in a smile when they see the text.

It's common in Thailand to see stray dogs running in packs along the roads or beaches. They can be quite aggressive and in some places you need to carry a stick to defend yourself. On Lanta you don't have to worry about this as Lanta Animal Welfare has done a great job in taking care of and limiting the number of stray animals. They frequently run sterilization programs on the island and every animal they treat is vaccinated against rabies, which means that this disease has not been found on Lanta for many years.    

You can watch a video from Lanta Animal Welfare below and please visit their website for more information www.lantaanimalwelfare.com

Lanta International Language School supports Lanta Animal Welfare in as many ways as we can and this season we run a campaign called "Farangs Around the World". We ask our students to take a photo of themselves wearing their farang t-shirt somewhere in the world and send to us to use on our website. For every posted photo the school donates 100 baht to Lanta Animal Welfare. In October we got eight farang photos and we hope that we will get even more in November.

You can follow the progress here:
Farangs around the World