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The beach, from seven
Beach Road's sand, all of it, from the Dusit corner to Walking Street, with the krathongs going out onto the bay and the moon coming up over Koh Lan. The busiest stretch is the middle, opposite Soi 13, which is our end.
The quietest festival of the year, and the prettiest
Loy Krathong is the festival visitors know least and Thais love most. On the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, usually in November, people take a small float made of banana trunk and leaves, with a candle and incense and three coins, and set it on the water to carry the year's bad luck away. In Pattaya the water is the sea, and the beach from Soi 6 to Walking Street is lined from dusk with families launching them into a bay that by nine is a field of small lights going out.
It is not a drinking festival. There are no buckets, no fireworks to speak of, and no closure of anything. The bars are open, the band plays if it is a band night, and the hall is about as full as any Thursday. What changes is who is in it and what they did first. The Thai staff have all been to the beach before their shift. Half the regulars have a photograph on their phone of a krathong they helped a child push out, and they show it to you at the counter without being asked.
The float is the thing to do, and it is easy: buy one from a stall on Beach Road for a few coins, walk down to the water, light the candle, make the wish, and let it go. Then walk up Soi Diana. The whole thing takes an hour and it is the one night in Pattaya when the beach is quieter than the hall.
What it is like at the bar
The hall on Loy Krathong is soft in a way it is not on other nights. The Thai regulars are in the mood the festival puts them in, which is reflective and slightly sentimental, and the band knows it: the second set has more Thai songs than usual and the tables nearest the stage sing them. There is a moment most years, around ten, when the singer says something in Thai and the room goes quiet and then laughs, and none of the farang at our tables know what it was, and it does not matter.
There is no decoration, because the festival's decoration is the sea. There is no event, because the event was at the beach. The bar does what it does every night, which is open at six, pour properly, and put you three metres from a drummer in a cold room. Loy Krathong is a good night to see that the room works without an occasion.
The date moves. In 2025 it was 5 November; in 2026 it is 24 November. Check the year you are reading this. It sometimes coincides with the Buddhist holy day, in which case the alcohol rules for that day apply and the bar will say so on its Facebook page the week before. When it does not, it is the best midweek night of November to be at a stage-side table, because the tables are easy and the room is in a mood you will not see on a Saturday.