Loy Krathong flowers in Bangkok: what goes on a krathong, and what floats without harm

In 2026, Loy Krathong falls on Tuesday 24 November. Flowers for the evening can be booked now for any delivery window that day.

Loy Krathong is the one Thai festival built around flowers rather than decorated with them. On the night of the full moon of the twelfth lunar month — late November most years — people carry a small floating arrangement to the water, light its candle and let it go. The krathong is an offering to the water spirits and the river goddess, an apology for a year of use, and a way to let the year's bad luck float off. Everything on it has a reason.

What goes on a krathong

• The base: a slice of banana trunk, which floats for hours and rots away in days. Bread bases are a modern alternative that fish will finish overnight.
• Banana leaf: folded into pointed petals around the rim — the lotus shape. The folding is the craft; it takes a morning to learn and a lifetime to do fast.
• Flowers: marigold for the sun and merit, jasmine for purity, orchids and globe amaranth for colour that survives the evening. Lotus if you can get it, because the whole krathong is a lotus.
• Three incense sticks and one candle: the light is what you are sending.
• A coin, a nail clipping, a strand of hair: the year's bad luck, on its way out. Skip the coin; it is a small fortune to the person who collects krathongs at dawn.

Floating without harm

Bangkok's canals and the Chao Phraya carry thousands of krathongs on the night, and the city collects them at first light. What matters is that yours is all plant material: no foam base, no plastic pins, no glitter, no wire. Banana trunk, leaf, flowers and incense come back to the river as if they were never there. Many parks and hotels now float krathongs on ponds that are cleaned the next day, which is easier on the river than the river is.

Flowers for the evening

People also bring flowers to the evening itself — a small bunch for a date on the riverbank, a garland for an elder, a bouquet for a first Loy Krathong together. Marigold and jasmine keep the night's colours; the occasions page lists what is in season, and anything ordered for the festival evening should be booked ahead, because the night is the same for everyone. If you want something that outlasts the moon, preserved flowers keep the colours for a year.

For a date by the river, a rose bouquet or something from under ฿1,000 travels well in the crowd; book a delivery window that ends before you leave home.

Whatever you float, watch it until the candle is out of sight. That is the part of the tradition nobody writes down.