The next two days were mostly spent conferencing, so the day time wasn’t super exciting. Thursday night was the conference banquet, which I skipped due to the expense, so instead I wandered around town more and ate a bunch of street food. That night was the start of the Loy Krathong Festival, during which people release lanterns into the air and into the water. You’re supposed to make a wish as you release the lantern into the air – sort of letting go of worries or something. There was yet another parade tonight as well. It was very similar to the previous night – I think each of the floats in the parade is made by a different local group or business, so they’re fairly interesting and different from each other. One of them had a very bored looking monk on a throne with a large bronze cauldron in front of him. People stood on either side of the street and tried to throw coins into the cauldron.
Lantern pictures! These photos are particularly bad because of they’re night shots …
Friday was the last day of the conference and didn’t really have any presentations I was super interested in, so I ended up skipping the afternoon session and going back to my room to nap. For dinner, I met up with a bunch of people from the conference. On the way there, there was once again another parade and more lanterns being released. One of the groups that had a float in the parade was the Chiang Mai Night Safari (some sort of tourist thing, I assume), and they had a bunch of people with antlers on, which was pretty cool. There was also a float with with a three-headed elephant statue on it, and some sword fights.