Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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LIGHTS!
BALLOONS! FIREWORKS!

by J.M. Cadet

It's time for Chiang Mai's annual Full Moon Festival LOY KRATONG

Nang Nopamat

You'll probably have noticed - Chiang Mai isn't short of festivals. Songkran - the Thai New Year - one of the most popular, is guaranteed to impress if you get out there and go toe to toe with the other water-dispensers. Then there's Piti Sao Intakhin - when you pay your respects to the city pillar: the Flower Festival, just before the end of the cool season: a gallimaufry of minor bean-feasts - the Weaving, Handicraft and Umbrella festivals, in their respective localities. Also not to be overlooked are the religious occasions like Ork and Khau Pansa - the beginning and ending of Buddhist Lent: Dakbat Devorohana, a performance in memory of the Buddha's discourse in heaven to his mother and aunt: the Chinese Vegetarian Festival, which honours the Bodhisattva Jao-Mae Kwan Im. And the international occasions like Christmas and New Year are certainly not to be ignored. Sanuk after all - enjoying yourself - is one of the key elements of basic Thai culture.

But when it comes to popularity, both with the local celebrants and the Thai and foreign visitors to the North, the Loi Kratong Festival (Fri, 26th November), is up there with the best of them. With any luck and El Nina permitting, we'll be well into the cool season by this time, the rains behind us and the really colder weather still to come - the perfect time for a tranquil and graceful display of Thai of culture at its most attractive…always supposing the authorities get a grip on the wilder elements of the fire-cracker and thunder-flash crowd.

Up she goes

Which raises a question or two, certainly, and in due course we might look at the answers. Meanwhile, let's acquaint ourselves with the cultural details. Knowing what the festival's all about might get you through the coming three days rather better than otherwise.

According to legend, some seven centuries ago the daughter of a brahmin priest - her name Nang Nopamat - made a decorative float and showed it to the ruler of the southern kingdom of Sukhothai. Impressed by its (and possibly, her) beauty, the king had it set down on a river and, since it's not a bad idea to do what your ruler does, the courtiers followed suit, and the people with them. So much at least for the legend of origin. The facts may be somewhat different, of course. The mention of the brahmin priest-official suggests that like other Thai festivals, this one may have arisen in India, where the Festival of Lights which also features ceremonies involving the floating of decorative vessels, takes place in the same quarter of the year. At all events, as we see from the schedule, the most important parts of the occasion in Chiang Mai are the making of krathong both big and small, their ceremonious parading through the streets of the Northern capital, and their release onto the Ping River and other waterways. On the first day, the small krathong made of banana stems and leaves, and bearing candles, incense sticks, flowers and small coins, are carried down to the river and set afloat, with the intention of…

Well, what exactly?

The anthropologists will sternly tell you it's a rite to persuade the local serpent-ruler - Phaya Nak as he's known in Thailand - to halt the monsoon rains, dispel the floods, and return the rivers to their normal peaceable ways. As late as the 19th C, they inform us, the Tai in North Vietnam were sacrificing children with that aim in mind. And just in case you might smile incredulously at such an obviously outmoded way of thinking, you should know that one of the highest ranking members of the current government has gone public in announcing that Phaya Nak is still around and can be seen at certain times in the Mekhong River (and he's got photos, he says, to prove it). On the other hand, a more credible belief is that krathong-floating is an act of respect and a form of thanks to the Mother of the Waters, Mae Kongka. Then again, in a somewhat intermediate explanation, we are said to be paying our respects to the ngeuak or female water spirits, or alternatively to Phra Maha Uppakut - a monk-like being who spends his time meditating in the river, coming out on his alms rounds on the Wednesday mornings when the moon is full, and generously rewarding those giving food to him. Not to be overlooked also is the belief that when you float your krathong away, you're getting rid of the year's bad luck - so be careful not to upset your vessel, or let it come back to you, or you'll start your new year with the old bad luck as an extra burden. And if you perspicaciously remark that these are rather confusing beliefs and surely in opposition to the Buddhist teachings about karma, we'll very probably nod our heads in agreement and go on doing and believing in all of them - as we have since time immemorial.

LOY KRATHONG FESTIVAL
SCHEDULE:
19 November - 27 November, 2004

19-25th	Events	Location
7 - 9 a.m.	Yi Peng Festival Grand Opening	Three Kings Monument
3 - 5 p.m.	Opening of Yi Peng Legend Week	Three Kings Monument
5 - 6.30 p.m.	Thip Fah Thoed Khwan & Khantoke dinner	Governor’s House
25th	Events	Location
5 - 7 p.m.	Opening of Yi Peng	Thapae Gate
21st	Events	Location
9 - 5 p.m.	Traditional Drumming Contest	Yupparaj School
24th-26th	Events	Location
6 a.m. - 10 p.m.	Ethnic Culture Shows	Wat Jed Rin
25th - 27th	Events	Location
9 a.m. - 4 p.m.	Exquisite Krathong Contest	Three Kings Monumen
9 a.m. - 4 p.m.	Wood Rafting, Diving, and Exotic Contest	Chiang Mai Office Municipality
3 - 12 p.m.	Yi Peng Fair	Buddhist Center Chiang Mai
7 - 12 p.m.	Yi Peng Fair & Little Girl Contests	Thapae Gate
8 - 12 p.m.	Fireworks and Hot Air Lanterns	Chiang Mai Municipality
9 - 10 p.m.	Light and Sound Events on the river	Opposite Chiang Mai Municipality Office
25th	Events	Location
7 - 10 p.m.	Yi Peng Lantern Parade	from Thapae Gate to Chiang Inn Plaza
8 - 12 p.m.	Firework Contest	Wat Sri Khong Pier
26th	Events	Location
7 - 8 a.m.	Paying Respect to Chedi Khau and the Ping River	Chiang Mai Municipality Office
9 - 12 a.m.	Hot Air Balloon Competition	Chiang Mai Municipality Office
4 - 6 p.m	International Thai Boxing	Chiang Mai Gate
6 - 12 p.m.	Hand Made Krathong Contest	Chiang Mai Municipality Office
8 - 12 p.m.	Beautiful Krathong Contest	Ping River
26th-27th	Events	Location
7 - 10 p.m.	Traditional Lanna Performance	in front of Governor’s house
27th	Events	Location
6 -12 p.m.	Giant Krathong Procession	Rachadamnoen Rd. to Chiang Mai Municipality Office

Remarks: Schedules and venues may change at short notice. For more information: Please call TAT at 0-5324-8604.

The first day, then, is the small krathong day, when persons, families, groups of friends, lovers etc. turn the Ping River into a stream of light, and very pretty it is, if you can get near enough to see.

The boat racing too gets under way at this time, also honouring the Naga and ngeuak of the river. As the schedule shows, there are many things going on from day one, and since the crowds are less forbidding in the daytime, it's well worth going around town then looking at each of the large floats decorated by schools, private businesses and government organisations, set out in the road fronting the building concerned. The writer was back in his own country some years ago, slightly surprised at the extent to which tourism has taken over there too, all kinds of recently-initiated festivals celebrated in just about any location with a name. And having seen the parades that also are a central feature of these festivals, he was even more surprised to find himself thinking, “Well, they do this kind of thing much better in Chiang Mai”. He shouldn't have been surprised, since putting on a good show either personally or organisationally is very much a Thai trait. All the same, the amount of time, effort and money devoted by just about everyone to making the Chiang Mai Loi Krathong parades as outstanding as they are is quite phenomenal, and it's hard to imagine anywhere else putting on a show that's comparable.

And it's on the second and third days that - if you're lucky - you get to see those bigger organisational krathong paraded, and they really are quite a sight, lit overall and bearing a smiling and lovely Nang Nopamat as each float is. The word 'float' is particularly appropriate here, since the krathong are released into the Ping River as offerings, just as the small ones are - complete with Ms. Noppamat: lucky Phaya Nak, you can't help thinking. The place to be at this time of the evening is on the Thaphae Road, or down on the river bank: but there's the rub! How do you get there, given the crowds?

How do you get there? Well, the author saw his first Loi Krathong parade some time during the Sixties, and very tranquil it was in those days, the occasion altogether less tourist-hyped and low key, and with far fewer activities other than the big parade. But even then it was crowded, and trying to get down to the river bank even relatively early in the evening, this writer and his friends eventually gave things up. But what to do about our krathong and their burdens of bad luck?

Now it would be too much to claim we started a tradition, but as I've said, in those days apart from the parade, the ancillary events were pretty minor, and if there was any balloon-floating it wasn't very noticeable. Well, as I say, we'd struggled to get through the crowds and then given up. And since we couldn't just plunk our krathong at the roadside - our bad luck would have been sure to follow us home - we bought a sufficient number of gas-filled children's balloons, attached them to the corners of the krathong and floated them skyward…happy to see the breeze gently carrying them in the direction of Bangkok.

Flags and lanterns at Chedi Khau

Well now, starting a trend or not, in the years since then the balloon business has really (pardon the pun) taken off, to the extent that warnings have been given to aircraft coming into and leaving the Northern capital to take appropriate notice. Like the fun with the fireworks, each year the releasing of balloons seems to be taking place earlier and earlier in the days before the festival, but it's certainly during the festival it reaches apogee. Schools do it; monks in temple courtyards do it; there are now balloon competitions organised by the municipality; and no private party is complete without the excitement of inflating and floating away a balloon, big or small. Quite a tense business, since getting it snagged on a tree or, worse still, caught up with a neighbour's wooden house, could be karmically damaging. "Please let it float clear," you'll find yourself pleading with the gods of the upper air as the balloon rises gracefully, hesitantly, trying to decide which way it will go, its fire-cradle swaying beneath it, its string of fire-crackers exploding into utterance. And what a relief when it does get clear, climbing to join all the others, going higher and higher until it's a dwindling dot way up in the cool night air…

But quite the most lovely part of the festival is the way people decorate their houses: palm fronds, sugar cane, all sorts of flowers worked into the gates and fences. And when the evening deepens, little lanterns and candles are placed around the walls and gates and lit, so that there's not only fire on the water and up in the air, but around each dwelling too, imparting an atmosphere of gentle tranquillity.

To come back to the question - to close with the question - earlier raised: given the crowds attracted to the festival in Chiang Mai, and the authorities' apparent unwillingness to curb fire-work mania - where can those of us who prefer things quieter, less hectic, more like the old days, best enjoy ourselves? The answer seems to be: get yourself invited to a private Loi Krathong party given by one of the river-bank dwellers. Or failing that, what about a look round Chiang Mai during the day time, and spending one of the festival nights at a place like Lamphun, Lampang, Phayao, or Mae Hong Son?

Things may not go off with quite the bang they do in Chiang Mai, but you might find more of the old-time spirit.

Wherever you are, at all events, to put it in the Northern idiom - a happy Yi Peng to you.