These problems mainly revolve around the cautiousness of the elderly, which challenged - and even changed - my fieldwork ideas. An elderly who prefers to remain anonymous states "It's not that we don't trust you, it's just that you"re different, and you won't ever fully understand our Thai traditions." Due to my respect for their wishes to not become involved in my fieldwork, I decided to leave the elderly out of my interviews, and instead, focused on the younger generations. Keeping this in mind, due to circumstances out of my control, my fieldwork is not a completely accurate interpretation of the changes and views on the Loy Krathong Festival. .
Another difficulty I encountered was celebrating the Loy Krathong Festival without experiencing it fully and completely traditionally. In a conversation with Thanida Amornpatsophon, I found realized that " traditions are sometimes hard to keep up with when you"re living in a foreign country. It's not impossible to perform all the ceremonies authentically, but it is very, very hard Many people have stopped trying, and are just celebrating festivals to as great an extent as they can and sometimes that's not an awful lot." I realized that I wasn't experiencing Loy Krathong as Thais would be experiencing it in Thailand, and I had to mainly rely on my imagination to conjure up images of the excitement evoked from the fireworks, and the magnificent light and sound shows. A participant in the festival, who prefers to remain anonymous, states "Here, we have to take our krathongs out of the water after we have floated them. That would never be done in Thailand it is considered to be ba!.
d luck. We float the krathongs with the desire to float away the evil, but now we"re just bringing them back home with us." .
These problems indicate to me two general aspects of most cultures. Firstly, elderly can feel cautious when foreigners attempt to perform their cultural or religious rituals, probably because the elderly don't conform well to change.
