Yi Peng and Loi Krathong

I wish I could say we had planned to be in Chiang Mai during Yi Peng and Loi Krathong.  But we didn’t.  We were looking for hotels and finally found one that had availability.  The owner responded that he’d be “happy to have (us) for the festival.”

The festival?

So we quickly looked it up and realized we were going to be in Chiang Mai for one of, if not THE, most popular festival in the region.

We quickly forgot about it as we went along our journey.

When we arrived at our hotel, the owner, Mr. Kem, asked if we’d like to join other hotel guests for the lantern lighting.  Sure!  We were game.  So the next day, we piled into a little red pickup with 12 strangers and drove an hour outside of town.

We ended up and Maejo University.  The place was packed!  Literally shoulder to shoulder.  Fire codes were being violated left and right – and I’m not even talking about actual fire yet!

As we walked with our new friends, we bought our lanterns and made our way to the lantern lighting area.  There was a presentation being done by the buddhist monks, talking about the festival as a celebration of the new moon – this was all gleaned from the internet, as the entire presentation was done in Thai.

The field is football-ish sized and every 6-8 feet – in all directions – were tiki-torch-like sticks, waist-ish high.  Around 7 or 8PM a throng of students started making their way around the field, lighting all of the torches.

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definitely helped with the mosquitoes 🙂

Then, we were told to refrain from lighting our lanterns.  This was done in English.

Once it was time to light our lanterns, we all huddled around the torches to get ours to light.

Some sweet Thai girls helped us get ours lit.  We waited for the signal and then the MC told everyone to release their lanterns.  As triumphant-Disney-esque music played in the background, we watched as thousands of lanterns were released into the sky.  It was beautiful.  For a few seconds, I stopped thinking about what dangerous activity this was and the amount of garbage it was creating upwind.  I just watched and enjoyed.  Man.  It was a sight.

Not sure if the video will work, but I tried to get a short one to show how crazy it all is.

We had one last lantern, so we launched it with some of the new friends we had made on our truck ride up.

The next day, the festivities continued just down the street from our hotel.  Let’s talk about how this would NEVER, in a MILLION YEARS, happen in the US.  Don’t get me wrong, it would be amazing if it could, but it won’t.  Here’s why.

1. It looks easy enough.  But it’s not.  One of our friends tried to light one by himself.  Big mistake.  It caught on fire.  He had some singed hair.  No biggy.  It’s also tough to gauge when to let go.  If you let go too early, it will float back to the ground – typically landing on some unsuspecting person’s head.

2. Trees. People generally try to light these off in open areas.  But that doesn’t mean they can’t get caught in trees.  We say over a dozen get stuck on power lines and in trees.  They catch on fire and burn up.  Thankfully, it’s so humid that the trees don’t catch on fire.  This was very stressful for me.

3.  Fire crackers.  Yes.  Some people think it’s a good idea to tie firecrackers to the lantern.  As the lantern floats away, they light said fire crackers so that they go off while the lantern floats away.  When executed properly, it’s quite pretty.  Remember that the lanterns must be let go at the appropriate time or else they will float back to the ground?  Yeah.  Now, instead of just a flaming ring of fire landing on your head, you also get some fire crackers.

This guy grabbed his lantern as it floated back to the ground, making sure the fire crackers didn’t get anyone.

4. And don’t get me started on the garbage and littering.

But really, it was beautiful, and it’s a good reminder of why it’s ok to break the rules or not even have any in the first place.  This was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in my entire life.  If you’re planning a trip to Thailand in November, try and coordinate it so you can be in Chiang Mai for Loi Krathong and Yi Peng.

And for anyone interested, here is the scene from Tangled, where they let off all of those lanterns. It looked just like that.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD_IEqxp-e0