Loi Krathong Festival (lantern festival)

Heading downtown in a tuk-tuk!

Loi Krathong is a lantern festival in Thailand. "Loy" means "float" and "Krathong" is a little boat made from banana leaves. So "Loy Krathong" is roughly "float banana leaf boats".

Who knew...a bar on wheels

Entering festival territory. You can always tell there's a party when dozens of food vendor's arrive.

The Chiang Mai Beauty Contest!

The beauty contests that accompany the festival are known as "Nopphamat Queen Contests"

The large lanterns being lit up on the Ping River.

You are able to buy small lanterns and light the candle, incense and sometimes coins to float on the river. The festival is believed to originate in an ancient practice of paying respect to the spirits of the waters.

Lanterns are hung all around down town. My little beauty had fun walking through the hundreds of lanterns.

This is the fun part! Launching lanterns, called Khom fai (comb figh) or fire kite, are a popular activity to do during the festival.

We launch the lanterns for good luck. As the lanterns float off into the night sky it takes away all of our sin and bad luck from the past year.

Here it goes! I already feel luckier:) I do have to comment the first time Hailey let this one go, it didn't have enough air and was falling back to the earth in the middle of the busy street.

So here I am running into the street attempting to grab the lantern before it gets destroyed by a vehicle.

Spatular view!! It looked like hundreds fireflies moving through the night.

We stayed up late until the lanterns appeared like distant stars.

This my friends was an experience of a lifetime!