Chiang Mai

November 14-18, 2024

Chiang Mai was the impetus for this around the world trip and the first booking that Francesca made well before we even left US soil.  She has been fascintated by the famous Chiang Mai Yipeng Festival (aka "Sky Lantern Festival") for years and it's occupied one of the top spots on her bucket list.  I mention this so you understand how high the stakes were when I tell you that we almost missed the festival!

The first thing that went wrong was that there was a major flood in Northern Thailand the month before we were due to arrive.  That caused our AirBnb host to cancel our long held reservation saying that their house was damaged and could not house guests.  We later saw the same property listed on AirBnb for more money than we were booked for so we suspect the owners realized how popular the Lantern Festival was going to be and that they underpriced their property so they pulled it to relist at a higher price. 

The second thing that went wrong is that when we arrived at the hotel that we booked for the Yipeng Festival weekend said they had no record of our reservation when we arrived adding that there are a lot of scammers in Thailand.  Unfortunately given the popularity of the festival there were absolutely NO ROOMS available in Chiang Mai, not in hotels, Airbnb, or hostels.  

It took hours to sort it out and for a while there it was looking like we might have to go an hour or two outside of Chiang Mai if we didn't want to sleep in our rental car, which, by the way, we needed to return that night.  But all's well that end well I suppose.  We ended up with a fully paid 3 nights at the 5 star Shangi-La hotel.  If you want to hear the full, gripping, thrilling story of how we almos missed the Lantern Festival and had to sleep in our car, click here to read our travel story Finding Shangi-La.

The kids loved the luxury of the Shangri-La and would have been content to stay at the hotel pool all day long.  They loved the special touches of a high end hotel like the humongous teddy bear and Mikey Mouse slippers they put in our room since they new we had kids with us and the personal note on our TV announcing "Daniel, Welcome to Shangri-La!".  

Ryan delivered a nice touche moment when, referencing how we say that one of the goals of this trip is for the kids to see that other people have less than we have, he quipped "Dad, it's also good to see that other people have MORE than we have!".  Point, kids. 

The major draw of Chiang Mai was the Yipeng Festival so I'll spend most of this blog's real estate on that, but we did spend three days outside of the festival in Chiang Mai and enjoyed the food, the cheap massages and a beautiful, modern mall where the kids (and let's be honest, me and Francesca too) felt a sense of normalcy by (window) shopping at brand name outlets and seeing a Hollywood movie (RED ONE with the Rock).   

Okay, now for the good stuff - The Yipeng Lantern Festival. The Yipeng Festival originated from the indigenous Lanna culture of Northern Thailand and takes place on the 2nd full moon of the 12th month of their calendar.  It is a religious event where various types of lighted offerings are made to show devotion to Buddha.

The Three Lights of Yipeng are (1) the Phang Pratheep, small candles in clay pots said to bring wisdom and act as a guiding light in our lives, (2) Krathong, floating candles used to show gratefulness to Ganga, the Goddess of Water and (3) the signature of the festival, Khomloy, the “Sky Lanterns” that are believed to carry away one’s bad luck. People make a prayer, or wish, for the future and send up the lantern into the heavens so the gods can hear their prayers more easily.  See some photos and videos of our three-day Yipeng weekend. 

• On Day 1 we observed countless Phang Pratheep in businesses around the city (often stepping over them to get into our massage appointments ). 

• On Day 2 we participated by lighting and floating our Krathong (along with thousands of our closest new friends!) from the Narawat Bridge down the Mae Ping River.  

• And finally on Day 3 we sent up 5 Khomloy at the Doi Saket lake (along with 10,000 of our closest new friends). Our prayers were for the following: Family Health, Financial Security, Travel Safety and Adventures. I know that’s only 4 prayers, but our first Health one never made it to the sky, getting caught in a tree so we figured we should do it again to make sure it was heard by the gods in heaven.

On our last day we snuck one more quick day trip in to visit Wat Umong (aka "The Forrest Temple") about a 15 minute tuk tuk drive from our place.  This wooded, serene place offered ponds with fish to feed, a massive temple, tunnels and a "graveyard" of broken Buddhist iconography.  We could have stayed longer, but we needed to get back in time to catch our van ride to the train station and our overnight rail trip to Bangkok. 

The train ride was fun and the 11 hours went quickly with most of it while we were sleeping.  A porter would convert the facing seats into two bunk beds at 7:30pm for the overnight portion and return them to seats at 6am before our arrival in Bangkok. There was a dining car where you had to order food in advance and show up at a certain time to eat it, but it was like a really bad TV dinner and most of us went to bed hungry as a result. 

But when we awoke, we saw Bangkok in the early morning light.