Normally I'm not a fan of touristy festivals. I much prefer to go to where the locals go and enjoy the moment with them. However this year someone paid for my ticket to go there, so I thought, "Why not?" as it would be interesting to compare the relatively expensive tourist experience with the local experience that I had done for the past five years.
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This year's festival was in a place called Doi Saket, roughly 20 kilometres north east of the main town. It was deceptively far as Doi Saket starts around 5 kilometres outside of the town, but it wasn't too long until we got to the entrance.
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The festival itself was a typical Thai style, and by that I mean it was an outdoor setup with elaborate lighting and a big stage, surrounded by food and souvenir stalls. It was pretty hectic, but after a bit of a kerfuffle we managed to find our seats.
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We got to our seats at 7:25 and wolfed down our packed lunch style free meal. I wasn't complaining; it was free. Then once a few Thai dance shows had finished a lady got on the tannoy and announced that we should open our lanterns to get ready for the mass release.
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"We will be releasing our lanterns at 8:00!" she declared, causing mass confusion because she'd told everyone to get their lanterns out 30 minutes beforehand. Some people got confused and lit their lanterns up, causing the event staff to bark at them saying they won't supposed to let them off yet.
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More confusion ensued when the lady then bizarrely said to us all, "OK are we ready? OK, ready...READY... NOT YET!!!!" Which of course led to a few more non native English speakers to light theirs up.
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"OK, IN 15 MINUTES TIME WE WILL BE PLAYING THE INSTRUCTION VIDEO ON HOW TO LIGHT THE LANTERNS!" She announced as more people were lighting their lanterns and releasing them. Eventually she panicked as they were all losing control and she shouted, "OK TEN! NINE..." counting down to try and restore some order.
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It worked (Kind of) and everyone let go of their lanterns at once and I must admit it was very tranquil watching hundreds - possibly thousands - of lanterns go up together. The whole idea of the lanterns is to let go of any stress and unnecessary tension you have built up over the year, and to be fair it felt like my troubles were drifting away.
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Once the lanterns had long flown into the sky I let one more off and someone was kind enough to take a photo of me as I did so. Then we decided it was time to head on back. There was a hell of a lot of traffic though and we were stuck in the car for 20 minutes before we could move. The tour buses were blocking off the roads and if I were to do this again I'd probably get some food and wait around a while for the buses to move, as we couldn't go anywhere anyway.
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Ultimately, as it was free it was a great experience, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it if I paid for it though. Granted watching the lanterns all go up at the same time was magical, and it was cool to say I've done it at the actual festival. But I heard some people paid hundreds of dollars for this, where you can go to the two main bridges in Chiang Mai and experience the same energy for free. Either way you will still have a great time in Chiang Mai regardless of which one you do...
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