First day of Yee Peng and Loi Krathong festival! - Chiang Mai, Thailand
Chiang Mai, Thailand
We woke up a little better than the day before, only to encounter some bad news. Baby Peanut is very sick and doing very poorly. Luckily, Diana was able to realize that she was sick, because of the fresh memory of Isabelle, and took her to the vet. Thankfully, she caught it soon enough and thanks to her amazing care of baby Peanut we are very hopeful that she will be alright! Thank you so much! Feeling down, we went out wanting something sweet and naughty. Remembering that we had passed a cute dessert shop on our way to our guesthouse, we decided to go searching for it again. Are we ever glad that we did! It is the cutest little piano/coffee bar. Chantal had somewhat local (Chiang Rai) coffee called 'Doi Chaang', the beans are grown on Chaang mountain. It is quite good, although it is traditionally served Americano style and Chantal prefers something a bit stronger. Katrine had a delicious papaya shake (papaya is turning out to be her favourite fruit). We each had a piece of cake, but ended up sharing them: chocolate cheese cake and warm toffee cake with with toasted cashews and caramel topping. Delicious! (We should also mention that all of these cost about 6.50$!). Afterwards, we made our way back to our room, since we had to switch from the single room we had stayed in to a double room. We were happy to make the switch since the double room is larger and has windows out onto the street instead of just windows to the hallway (which it quite common in Thailand, as they simply extend the hallway to the end of the building and have windows in the hall that are always open to air out the building). We also went to retrieve our laundry and were happy to find that nothing was damaged and nothing was missing (other travellers have reported some issues with laundry services - when I say laundry service I really mean you go down an ally and drop it off at a house with laundry hanging out front, pay the laundress upfront and receive no receipt, just her word that you can have it tomorrow). Between switching rooms and retrieving our laundry, we stopped across the street at Wat Chiang Man, which is the oldest temple in Chiang Mai. It was quite beautiful, as are all of the wats. What is a bit special about this one is that in the second building (smaller of the two) there are two Buddhas enshrined, the Crystal Buddha and the ___ Buddha (can't remember) and because of this, the walls are covers in murals of Buddhas life. After taking a Buddhism course and learning of Buddhas life, is was quite interesting too see it depicted. Also, outside of the main temple building were women selling small birds in cages; upon releasing them you receive merits which add to your karma. It is a bit of a sad system, as the women will often go and collect the birds again after they have landed to eat the grains on the ground nearby. This began because Buddha is said to have released caged animals and birds in his lifetime, so some Buddhist would buy the song birds of beautiful birds often sold in markets and free them. We relaxed a little in the afternoon, before packing up our small day pack and heading out for the start of the festivities. We went to the Tapea Gate where there were huge lantern displays (just like the Chinese Lantern Festival which came to Canada a few years ago from China) for other ASEAN countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Malasia, etc. A bit further up, there was a large stage where the opening ceremonies would be held, along with performances. We walked through the market stalls in the same area before the ceremonies began and returned to watch a couple of performances. It was beautiful, but due to technical difficulties the ceremonies were postponed for an hour or so. Instead, we walked down the main strip, which was closed off for the parade which would follow the ceremony. We thought about waiting around to watch the parade but no one seemed to know at what time it would start (when asking around we heard anywhere between 30min to 2hrs - it turned out it was closer to the later time). Instead we decided to walk towards the Ping river where it was best to release the lanterns and we would just hope to see the parade when it would go by. On the street there were numerous food stalls, which made Katrine very happy, and also many places to buy paper lanterns and Krathong (floating flower arrangements with candles and incense, be set off on the water). We bought a lantern and made our way down to the Ping river, where many people send them up. It is also apparently good luck to lite them on temple grounds, so many of the temple were filled with people (mostly Thai). It was nice to see that the majority of the people out for the festival were Thai, despite the fact that it is the busiest time of the year for tourists. It just shows that the festival is still for Thai peoples. Most Thais in this area and of Chinese descent (this can be seen in the some of temples, shrines, food and overt use of zodiac animals), but other groups came from Burma or other surrounding countries some generations ago. In the festival, you could also see some minority tribal groups being represented, just as the Karen and the Lahu. It was very nice to see all the different ethnic groups coming together for one festival. Along the way, Katrine had a chicken burger, which was fairly good, Chantal had Burmese deep fried tofu with spicy chilli sauce, and Katrine has fried squid, which was surprisingly okay (but would have been better with so,e type of sauce but all they had was spicy chilli). Along the way, many buildings were beautifully decorated for the festival with followers and lanterns. It was quite a beautiful sight, especially with lanterns being floated in the air everywhere we looked. And Saturday is just the beginning! Like a practice run! Everything is supposed to be bigger and better on Sunday! At some point we stopped to look at the display for a massage parlour (covered in fresh orchids!) when a lady came out saying that they just opened and had a opening special (Yee Peng is an auspicious time for new beginnings). She invited us in to look at the special (we assumed a menu) but she kept going to the back and then turned up the stairs! We were certain at we were going to be attacked or something would happen! She brought us upstairs and into a private massage room, showed us the beds and told us that we could stay and have a massage for 'only' 199 baht... That is very inexpensive for a beautiful place like that, dark teak wood, luxurious fabrics, candles, flowers and incense everywhere; this place would normal be at least double. However, we prefer to go to the temples where we can get the same massage for 120 baht (profits go to maintaining the temples). Also, it was quite scary to be brought upstairs, but many tourists would feel awkward (like we did) and just give in. We, however, are trying to be frugal and the extra 80 baht can buy us one dish. A good savings. We continued on our way, stopping at a couple of temples, both very beautiful. The photos, unfortunately, are on the camera, so we will post them at a later date. The temples were beautifully decorated and many people were there setting of lanterns, buying small gifts or food and some children were doing traditional dances. It was a beautiful night, with so many lanterns in the sky that it looked like stars. It was a very cloudy night, with barely the moon showing through so each light in the sky was a lantern, but upon looking up you could swear that they were stars! Upon arriving near the river, we found many people setting off lanterns in a small park area. W decided that this place was as good as any for our first lantern. We were lucky to find a nice open spot near a couple of nice girls. They took pictures for us during the process and we took pictures for them. They also had a lighter, which we had forgotten! It was a wonderful experience and quite a lot of fun and we look forward to doing it again! Katrine lit the wick and then we had to hold it for a few minutes as it filled up with hot air. Once ready (you could tell because it started pulling to fly off), we made a wish and then let it go! We were very lucky as it worked perfectly and flew straight up into the sky. A couple peoples' lanterns had issues. Some of them didn't light properly, or they didn't wait long enough so it came right back down when they let go and we even saw one get stuck in a tree! That would have been so embarrassing! But it worked out well and we were very happy! We didn't set off a Krathong though, since Sunday and Monday are apparently the best days for doing so. But you can release the lanterns at any point during the three day festivities. So after about 7pm, the sky was always filled with lanterns! It was a cloudy night and you couldn't see any stars which made it nice though because you were able to look up and know that all the shiny things in the sky were all lanterns! Afterwards, we went across the street to a festival area filled with market stalls. Chantal bought a 'lemon' (lime) shake and we watch a singer preform with her backup dancers on the small stage. There was a building for children with a bouncy castle slide, small train, festival games like dart throwing and shooting range as well as fish scoop (Katrine wished she was a young child so that she could also go on the bouncy castle!). This is a very common game in Southeast Asia. Chantal wanted to try it but did want to fail. Also, had she caught a fish she wouldn't know what to do, who to give it to. At one of the stalls outside we bought rings made from Thai coins (so they will tarnish) and they were engraved with our names in Thai (although Chantal became Kantal). We have each other's name engraved on our rings. It was very nice and romantic. We much prefer to have our names in Thai, as it is more fun than just in English. We returned to the main strip just in time to catch the last half of the parade. I was beautiful! The outfits were extraordinary and the lanterns we huge. There was dancing and music and everyone seemed to be having a good time, although it did seem quite hot for those participating, especially since the parade stopped at some point, most likely due to a fire (which happens quite often when a lanterns falls from the sky still lit or gets caught in a tree, or when someone sets off fireworks into trees - which is only against the law if it's a large firecracker). We walked along the stopped parade, which means we made it back to the main stage just as the contest for Mr. and Mrs. Yee Peng was wrapping up. We were able to see them crowned and thank the judges. Katrine had wanted to stay earlier to watch the whole thing but it was a good thing we didn't as it was all in Thai and we had a very hard time following what was happening. But it was a lot of fun seeing the winners! By now, close to 11:30pm, we started to make our way back to our guesthouse. Along the way, we stopped to take a picture of the wall surrounding the old city because it had been decorated with candles. We were able to also see some lanterns falling back down once their wick had been completely burnt out. Many had fallen down into the moat, others just on the street. It was sad to see them on the ground as these were people's wishes and hopes. We also tried not to think about the pollution all of these lanterns were creating though Chiang Mai seems to have an amazing clean up crew. We were also able to see some small fireworks, some even released by tourists. We tried not to stand too close as we has been warned that often people can get burnt from the small pieces that fall back down. Tomorrow night and Monday night there should be an actual firework display in honour of the festival and the king. We made it back safely and went to bed not too long after that, knowing that tomorrow would probably be another late night.