Why You Should Visit Chiang Mai During Loy Krathong Festival Once In Your Lifetime

Why You Should Visit Chiang Mai During Loy Krathong Festival Once In Your Lifetime

We hear about the trend of visiting Iceland to see the Aurora Lights, Japan during Sakura season, Maldives for honeymoon, Australia to see the kangaroos and many others. Of course there are more places in the bucket list such as Bora Bora, the Caribbean Islands, the Antarctica and the Antarctic.

Everyone wants to travel to cool places and to see something awesome. If you are one of them then you should visit Chiang Mai during Loy Krathong Festival once in your lifetime.

You probably hear how cool Songkran (water festival) in Thailand but wait till you see how cool Loy Krathong Festival is in Chiang Mai.

Loy Krathong Festival is celebrated by Thais, Laos and Northern states of Malaysia such as Kelantan and Kedah. The festival is about respecting and offering back to the river for the Goddess of Water with floating boats (kra thong). On the night of the full month of 12^th month in Thai calendar, the Thais will go to the river banks and offer their kra thong (with candles) in to the river.

In Chiang Mai, the locals also celebrate the Yi Peng Festival too. Yi Peng Festival is a Lanna (Northern Thai) Festivals and Yi means “two” (like Chinese) and peng means “full moon day”. Thus, it refers to the full moon day in the second month according to the Lanna lunar calendar (the twelfth month according to the Thai lunar calendar).

Yi Peng Festival is slightly unique as Lanna-style sky lanterns are set into the air during the festival. You can see many sky lanterns lit up the dark blue sky at night during the festival.

Why You Should Visit Chiang Mai During Loy Krathong Festival Once In Your Lifetime?

In Chiang Mai, you get to celebrate two festivals at once, the Loy Krathong Festival and Yi Peng Festival. You won’t be celebrating alone as you will be joined by thousands of locals and other tourists from all around the world.

In the old town, you can see hundreds of people at the river bank offering “krathongs”. The locals and the tourists celebrate together and you just need to buy one of the “krathong” at the roadside at a reasonable price.

For the Yi Peng Festival, you probably seen pictures of sky lit up by hundreds of sky lanterns in TV, magazines or websites. It is REAL. You can light up the sky lanterns in old town with others. You just need to buy the sky lanterns and you do not need to go to specific area to do so.

Starting from last year, there are no flights allowed in Chiang Mai as they closed down the airport for the Yi Peng Festival starting at 9pm for safety reason.

We were amazed by the amount of sky lanterns in the old town. It is hard to tell you the feeling and the emotions at the time. The view was breath taking and for that reason, it is worth to come here and celebrate Loy Krathong and Yi Peng in Chiang Mai at least once in your lifetime.

On top of that, there are parades on the streets of old town as well as fireworks. Expect to spend at least three to four days in Chiang Mai for this festival. Remember to stay in Chiang Mai old town as well as bring more clothes as it is chilly during end of the year. The old town to the airport is less than 30 minutes of driving so it is very convenient.

Plan your trip early so you can save cost on your flight and your accommodations. For 2016 Loy Krathong & Yi Peng dates, please read here.

You can check out our Thailand stories at https://www.placesandfoods.com/category/thailand

Bangkok is also the top city in Asia in terms of tourist arrivals as well as total nights stayed as well as top total expenditure according to report by Mastercard. You can also read more about Bangkok at https://www.placesandfoods.com/category/thailand/thailand-bangkok

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