Yee Peng Festival

We arrived in Chiang Mai on the opening day of the Yee Peng festival, known by westerners as the floating lantern festival. We had heard rumors that there would be a festival happening in Chaing Mai, and after a google search suspected it to be this festival, but our visit to the town during this time was completely coincidental and we were very lucky. The festival is a religious event celebrating the full moon in November (the 12th lunar month on the Buddhist calendar).  The main event is the release of the Khom Loy or floating lanterns. It's believed that your misfortune will float away with the lanterns. The last night of the festival, the 10th, was simply amazing. As we were walking down to the festival we saw people out celebrating everywhere, fireworks going off and lanterns being released all around us. The moon was so bright and you just see thousands of glowing lights floating all around it, it was beautiful. We bought a couple lanterns and set our first one off at a temple. The main places to release your lanterns are at temples and on the bridge, so we did both. The photos don't begin to do justice (there is a video posted on Facebook though!).  Everyone is happy and excited to release their lanterns and the feeling is contagious.  I still can't believe our luck in being in Chiang Mai during this time, and am ao glad we got to experience this!  Also, the street food was the bomb. 
During the days we've been visiting many of the temples in the city. There are over 300 temples here, most are very ornate and beautiful.
We've spent the last couple days at the Elephant Nature Park about an hour outside Chiang Mai, that post is coming once I weed through the hu dreds of photos.

Temple in Chiang Mai

Floating lanterns

Releasing a lantern with the full moon behind me

Lantern release at a temple

Releasing a lantern on the bridge