The Day of the Mae Jo Lantern Release, Chiang Mai.

The main event today is a trip out 10km north of Chiang Mai to see the famous Mae Jo Lantern release. This event is big news here and as it's just the day before Loy Krathong this year is expected to be extra busy. The monks here at Mae Jo university have a ceremony and they like everyone to release their lanterns on their signal. It is billed as the release of the 10,000 lanterns, I didn't count, but it is a lot. It has built over the years and now attracts 1000s of people.

The plan was to leave the city early and get a place in good time, but this being Thailand, the driver arrived late having been stuck in traffic and then the traffic out of the city was horrendous. The release is supposed to be at 20.30, but as we were only just getting into Mae Jo itself at 19.15 I started to fear the worst as the traffic up to the site of the release was jam packed with stationary traffic. So I abandoned ship and set off on foot armed with camers bags, tripods and no real idea where I was headed. It soon became obvious as the stream of people with the same bright idea were all heading in the same direction. And so dodging scooters, cars, Loy and lanterns sellers, after a 3km hike I managed to finally reach the place of release. Mind you, I did stop off to grab a bag or two of grilled squid sates along the way. Lanterns were being released constantly into the nights sky as I approched and it started to become hard to imagine what could be more spectacular than what I was already seeing. Then, as I had my nose in my camera bag in the darkess trying to grab the right lens, I heard a gasp, I looked up and there in front of me a huge wave of lanterns started to float up into the air... I gasped myself too and stopped worrying about a camera and just enjoyed the spectacle, a truly amazing sight. That was 20.10 and as I watched the mass of lanterns float away high into the night sky I started thinking about the long trek back to the main road. Just as I was about to walk away and head back, a Thai girl saw me leaving and said to me; "no, wait, more in a little while" and true to her word, at 20.20 another wave of lanterns was released and this time I was able to take a few pictures... see photo album.

After that I had had enough as there were 1000s of people and still more arriving so I headed back to the main road where the driver was waiting and we drove back into Chiang Mai, arriving around 21.30. I finished my evening off near the river in the night market and had panang gai for supper.

I am writing this on Sunday and later I will blog about today, where I unexpectedly saw the King of Thailand...