Three days of festivities, decoration and all day and all night sounds of fireworks. This was quite the festival! We were all feeling a bit worn by day three with little sleep but there was yet another parade to attend and we didn't want to miss out. The costumes and floats were the most intricate I've ever seen with loud speaker systems that told a story in both English and Thai. Notice the elaborate hair-dos in this short video.
Starting my first night in Chiang Mai I was able to scan the night sky for glowing lanterns that people had sent up as part of a ritual. Traditional belief has it that when these huge hot lanterns are set adrift and float away, so do the troubles of the persons who launched the balloon. The third night was the peak of lanterns. The sky was filled with the seemingly magical lanterns floating and bobbing about with the shifting of the breeze. It is impossible to truly capture what it is like to witness a sky full of lanterns but here is a quick video I took with some live music in the background to set the mood.
Jeremy and I both successfully launched a lantern my last night in Thailand. In addition to hoping the lanterns would take away all of our troubles we added our own personal wishes. The perfect ending to a wonderful visit with my brother and Thailand.
Upon my return to to San Francisco I at first thought the stars in the night sky were lanterns. I was so used to looking for lanterns and hadn't seen stars in Chiang Mai as the pollution hides them. It took me a few days to get re-accustomed to stars and not lanterns.
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