Flood-ravaged Thailand prays to water goddess

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BANGKOK, Nov 11 (AFP): Each year as the monsoon draws to an end, Thais thank the water goddess for sustaining life. But with deadly floods now plaguing the kingdom, many feel she has been a little too generous of late. The centuries-old Loi Krathong festival is usually an occasion for celebration with ornately-decorated traditional banana-leaf lanterns set adrift in rivers, canals and lakes under the night sky. This year it is a reminder of the kingdom's bitter-sweet relationship with water, which has left more than 500 people dead and wreaked havoc in the worst flooding to befall the nation in half a century. The festival, which also aims to seek forgiveness for polluting the precious resource, comes as questions mount over successive governments' management of water development and urban planning. "I apologised to the goddess of water, thanked her for giving us water to use and wished all the bad luck to go away," said Usanee Krapukthong, who launched her lantern on a lake in a Bangkok park Thursday. "I wished my house and also the whole country would be dry," said the 37-year-old expectant mother. "Normally I do it at a river, but this year I escaped the floods to come here." Her home has been submerged by more than one metre (three feet) of water for the past two weeks, like many others in badly-hit districts in the north and west of the Thai capital. Unlike Usanee, however, many residents have refused to evacuate despite the risk of disease associated with the polluted floodwater.