Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - realize it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it. – Sai Baba
Saturday, November 16, 2013 (DAYS 621 - 623)
If this festival is not on your bucket list, it should certainly be added along with experiencing several days in Thailand’s northern city of Chang Mai. Loi Krathong, which can be translated as “floating decoration,” also coincides with the more popular Lanna festival of Yi Peng (ยี่เป็ง), and is held on the second full moon of the Lanna calendar, thus the translation, "Yi" meaning "2nd" and "Peng" meaning "month" in the Lanna language). During this time a multitude of Lanna-style paper lanterns khom loi (โคมลอย), literally: "floating lanterns"), are released into the night’s sky in unison, or at least that is the point, and just by having a camera amateurs can suddenly appear to be professionals with just a few clicks capturing this incredible moment. Since I was arriving very close to the date of this festival from Korea, thankfully my friends Toby and Jade who have been living in Chang Mai for quite a few years had some very pertinent advice that I want to share with those willing to make the journey for next year’s 2014 Loi Krathong festival scheduled for the 7th of November.
If this festival is not on your bucket list, it should certainly be added along with experiencing several days in Thailand’s northern city of Chang Mai. Loi Krathong, which can be translated as “floating decoration,” also coincides with the more popular Lanna festival of Yi Peng (ยี่เป็ง), and is held on the second full moon of the Lanna calendar, thus the translation, "Yi" meaning "2nd" and "Peng" meaning "month" in the Lanna language). During this time a multitude of Lanna-style paper lanterns khom loi (โคมลอย), literally: "floating lanterns"), are released into the night’s sky in unison, or at least that is the point, and just by having a camera amateurs can suddenly appear to be professionals with just a few clicks capturing this incredible moment. Since I was arriving very close to the date of this festival from Korea, thankfully my friends Toby and Jade who have been living in Chang Mai for quite a few years had some very pertinent advice that I want to share with those willing to make the journey for next year’s 2014 Loi Krathong festival scheduled for the 7th of November.
| |  DOUBLE CHECK THE DATE OF THE FESTIVAL: Believe it or not, the Internet was wrong on the actual date listed, which stated November 17th would be the release of the lanterns, and it was actually on November 16th. After speaking with several locals, we came to the conclusion that because this is religious festival they try to keep the farangs (foreigners) away from it, and the following week there is another lantern release that is catered to tourists, even though there was nothing mentioned on the web about this either.  ARRIVE EARLY: Try and arrive a few days before the start of the festival as well as be sure to arrive in the early to mid afternoon at Mae Jo University–the campus grounds where the crowd congregates to release the lanterns. We were also told to leave within one hour or less after the lanterns are released because the pedestrian walkway is the size of a narrow two-lane road and people were getting pushed to the canal banks, even falling in the polluted water, and others, such as our group, climbed fences and squeezed through barbed-wire fences to escape the masses.  MAKE A RESERVATION: Once again Ashley, Adrian, and myself waited too long to make a reservation (within two weeks of the festival) for our accommodation and paid a premium for our 3-bed private room, but in the end it still worked out. This also includes transportation, whether you are planning to arrive by planes, trains, or automobiles (awesome film by the way) book early or you may be smashed in a horrible 13-plus hour ride.  BUDDY SYSTEM: With an estimated 100,000 people plus attending this year’s festival, just realize that while patience is a virtue, this will certainly test your breaking point. Feeling like children at several points, we grabbed hands of the closest person to you and latched on to the buddy system because you felt as though you were in a slow-moving swaying mosh pit, and even this often had broken links in our Red Rover-style form of keeping the seven of us together. Since we did get separated badly, it’s best to select a specific meet-up point that’s not a general area, such as the end of the road–it will be nearly impossible to find one another in the crowd. |
MY RTW PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
After speaking with one of the women at our guesthouse, our group has decided that we should try and leave around 3:30pm, since it will take us an estimated 30-minutes to drive the 17km outside of the city to Mae Jo University. Trying to wrangle a group of seven people is just about as difficult as wrangling midgets (and trust me, I know a thing or two about this), I have my troops in order and before we know it we have picked up three more people to fill out the back of the red pickup trucks that service as taxis around Chiang Mai. As expected there is plenty of traffic that keeps us at a standstill in the heat, but this doesn’t seem to be as awful as I was expecting with brief bouts of a breeze when we were accelerating and plenty of stories and laughter with our group as the anticipation and excitement built up for tonight’s event. Ashley, my American partner in crime, has actually stuck around Thailand for an extra month, just for tonight, before heading on her next adventure of conquering Australia.
After speaking with one of the women at our guesthouse, our group has decided that we should try and leave around 3:30pm, since it will take us an estimated 30-minutes to drive the 17km outside of the city to Mae Jo University. Trying to wrangle a group of seven people is just about as difficult as wrangling midgets (and trust me, I know a thing or two about this), I have my troops in order and before we know it we have picked up three more people to fill out the back of the red pickup trucks that service as taxis around Chiang Mai. As expected there is plenty of traffic that keeps us at a standstill in the heat, but this doesn’t seem to be as awful as I was expecting with brief bouts of a breeze when we were accelerating and plenty of stories and laughter with our group as the anticipation and excitement built up for tonight’s event. Ashley, my American partner in crime, has actually stuck around Thailand for an extra month, just for tonight, before heading on her next adventure of conquering Australia.
We have decided to give in and purchase three large Lanna-style lanterns for the price of 100THB ($3.15) for the set, before we make our way through the crowds to what is normally an open grassy space, but has been replaced with thousands of people. The confused mixed information we have all received from locals as well as the web has us thinking the release will be occurring at 6:30pm, but this is not the case. Since we are in the back of the crowd, towards the front is a group of monks that are chanting and speaking, but the sound in almost inaudible to us even with the assistance of speakers and this continues for almost two-hours. Unable to sit, and barely being able to kneel if we do it one at a time while the rest of the group stays upright, we watch the sun go down over the trees and the almost full moon (officially it will occur tomorrow night) is shining brightly down upon us. Through some confusion, Adrian and I prematurely lit one of the lanterns as other people around us were doing the same, because we thought we heard the signal to begin doing so. Thankfully we have another lantern that Asia is holding and has even taken the time to write each of our names on it with her red lipstick.
When the announcement finally occurs and the entire crowd to lights their lanterns, it is a bit chaotic, but suddenly it is one of the most beautiful sights as the entire night’s sky begins to be covered with these floating lanterns. Fireworks begin to add to the color in the sky and none of us can believe just how incredible the atmosphere has become. You can’t help but smile and think that regardless of how many photos or videos are taken, it will never do it justice to actually standing there and experiencing it firsthand. Remembering Toby’s advice, we grab everyone and attempt to push our way through the crowd towards the back gate. After walking a few inches shoulder to shoulder with the mob, we start noticing people climbing over a fence and standing there not moving for several minutes we decide to do the same. One by one we hop the fence, walk through trampled grass–behind the vendor’s lined along the narrow road, and eventually crawl through barbed-wire fence, which leads to our meet up point, an outdoor makeshift BBQ restaurant labeled ‘Home of the Cowboys.’ Since we all became separated, after about 15 or 20 minutes we’ve gathered everyone and decide to get out of Dodge. First, we jump inside the back of a slow moving red truck with an elderly couple to the end of the road, secondly, we’ve managed to negotiate with a local man that is solo on his motorbike with a sidecar and jam eight of us on this thing as we feel it will bottom out with even the slightest pebble on the road, then we are dropped off at the end of the main road where we manage to jump aboard another red taxi truck and make it back to Chiang Mai just after 11pm. Completely exhausted and being true Americans, Ashley and I along with our Swiss buddy Adrian and his love for the King, the three of us take the short walk to Burger King for a late night dinner and then crash out in our room to a Thai movie on the tellie.
The second night of the festival is where the name derives from, Loi meaning ‘to float’ and Krathong is typically in reference to a lotus decorated circular container and most have candles or sparklers attached to them to be lit and placed on the Chao Phraya River or even the canal in the city. Ranging in sizes, price, and elaborate design, as you walk through the streets not only do you have people trying to sell you their krathongs, but you also notice an army of both men and women quickly tying and wrapping these together sitting just behind or off to the sides of the tables of finished krathongs ready for sale. Two humorous local guys catch our groups’ attention, which at this point we’ve added Kettia from Chicago, Flavia from Brazil, and about five others from England and begin to make our way towards the river bank.
As we are pushing through the crowds, or better yet, just moving to the slow motion and direction of the thousands of other patrons, it is sensory overload. The incredible combination of lights, illuminating parade floats, marching bands, and every other combination for a night festival you can imagine, our group is constantly stopping to take advantage of photo opportunities. Through these brief pauses, I continue to find myself in conversation with someone different in our newly formulated group, as we begin our turtle’s pace through the streets. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the names of any of the people from England, but then again what have the British every done for us–other than try to take our freedom–haha, and so our slow journey takes us over an hour to reach the river bank before finally making it down to the cracking bamboo pier that I am certain can snack at any second with the amount of people on it. All I can do is pray, that this bamboo be strong–hold many people, because I feel that if I were to fall in the river water I’d come out with a variety of new diseases. It shocks me to see that there are locals waist deep helping assist people with placing their krathongs in the water.
Once we feel that we have accomplished our mission of getting our krathongs afloat, we fight our way through the crowds instead of just being swayed in the direction, and make our way down a side street and to an outdoor rasta café and snatch up the last table on the sidewalk. All around us there are fireworks lighting up the sky or just making loud noises–LOUD NOISES!–and we just take in the scenery of the continued floating lanterns above us. We all agree that it is nothing compared to the release from last night, as these are scattered throughout the sky in all directions, but they are still beautiful and Ashley makes the comment that they look like large poetic moving fireflies with the souls of angles or maybe she just said, “look at them red thingys there in the sky, they be movin, like up and stuff.” I mean she is from Oregon people and I just found it’s best to tune her out sometimes. Bahaha, I can’t wait for her to read this when she is in Australia because in order for her to declare satisfaction it would require jumping continents to do so.
As the festival winds to a close and the erupting masses of people begin making their way out of Chiang Mai, I’ve decided to stay a few days to allow the crowds to dissipate and this also gives me a chance to meet up with my friends Toby and Jade, who I’ve met through college friends that went to University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and have been living in Thailand for several years. We’ve formulated a plan to go out for dinner and on Monday evening just after 5pm they arrive at MD House, our guesthouse, with the newest member of their family, their adorable two-month old son, Cy. Since they have a car as well as a restaurant in mind that is outside of the old city, Toby has us racing through the streets, since he’s obviously learned the ins-and-outs of Thai driving, and I’ve invited my friend Asia from Poland along to fill the last open seat in their car. It’s always extremely enjoyable to be treated to a posh restaurant while backpacking, and Toby and Jade have been extremely kind by encouraging us to order whatever we’d like and that just a few hundred baht ($6.31) contribution will be fine. I can’t thank them, as well as all of the other amazing friends and people I’ve met throughout my travels enough for all of the kindness they have shown me. I really feel blessed not only in the opportunity to meet up with friends that literally live all around the world, but also in the chances to reconnect with them, and in this case, meet them as their family’s grow.
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