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Loy Krathong

Floating Crown

Story by Bo Mod December 7th, 2015

After traveling 24 hours from Penang - Malaysia, we arrivde in Chiang Mai in the very early morning. “A bit too early,” says our guesthouse manager. Thus we have time to explore this city for a few hours, after a very necessary coffee.

As we start exploring the Old City around 7am, we see the city waking up, mostly around buddhist temples that you see in every other street. We can hear some monks singing, and when we enter the temple to see them, they are praying in front of a huge golden Buddha.


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Some other monks are outside another temple, setting up lanterns for Loy Krathong.

Loy Krathong is a colorful festival held every year on the full moon of the 12th month in the Thai Lunar Calendar. People honor this festival in all the country, but there are particularly beautiful celebrations held in Chiang Mai, where it coincides with the Lanna festival of Yi Peng.

The festival features illuminated lanterns, carried or displayed around many buildings, including temples.

Krathong are floating offerings with flowers and candles, symbolising the drifting of misfortune. A small coin can be added as an offering to the river spirits.

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The sky lanterns - Khom Loy - have the same meaning of dispelling a person’s bad luck. Some have so much bad luck riding on their lanterns that they get stuck in the trees rather than floating away into the sky.

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Parade

There are three days of festival, mostly during the evening. We enjoy our time in northern Thailand to explore the area.

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The next morning, a car picks us up at our guesthouse and brings a small group of people to a market outside of the city. There, our cook challenges our knowledge of local ingredients by quizzing us about the vegetables and condiments found in a Thai market.

In a few hours of our cooking class, we discover a many dishes. Each of us has to pick one dish in every category: Soup, Noodles, Curry paste, and The curry itself. Bo and I picked different options: Coconut Soup / Spicy Soup, Pad Sea Ew / Pad Thai, Massama Curry / Red Curry with eggplants.

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Red Curry Paste
Coconut Chicken Soup & Pad See Ew
Cooking Drunken Noodles

On Wednesday, we decide to visit the Tiger Kingdom, a place where you can pet various tigers. We had mixed feelings about going here, as some tiger places drug or mistreat the animals, but the one in Chiang Mai insisted that you could tell by how active their tigers were that they were being treated well. We went for it.

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For our last day in Chiang Mai, which is the actual the Full Moon and the big parade, we spend the morning in a Elephant Rescue Camp (Ran-Tong [+ link]). These are captive elephants who were rescued from various locations, including circus-type shows, where the elephants are misused. In other areas, elephants are used as working animals, hauling logs while drugged on amphetamines to keep them working. We are going there to feed, ride and bathe Melopo, a beautiful 43-year-old elephant who was thrilled to eat our sugar cane and show us around.

Bathing Melopo in a small pond, we were covered in mud and, you guessed it, elephant poo. We needed a bath ourselves! The experience was amazing, and we’re surprised to say we didn’t mind at all. :-)

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All the pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/Stzt2q8fGAtMqdPb8

Footnote: Adventures by @boheekim and @philmod.
Chiang Mai, Thailand