Yi Peng, and then some.

There is SO MUCH TO TELL about my Thanksgiving weekend.  I'm not going to make you read a NOVEL describing my wonderfully packed Thanksgiving break, so I'll start with just one chapter - the Loikratong Festival, or "Lantern Festival," and more specifically, the opening ceremony called "Yi Peng."

It deserves a stand-alone blog post, anyway.

Nellie & I planned on spending time with our friends in Chiang Mai this weekend, particularly on Saturday evening for the Lantern Festival.  After attending the last morning of the educators' conference, we checked out of our conference hotel and into another one of our favorite hotels in Thailand (so quaint).  I decided that I couldn't take my grown out roots anymore and would go get a hair cut/hi-light.  I was going for the "natural ombre" look, but then realized that it just looked like really poor-kept roots that needed some tlc.  My thinking with ombre was "Well, if I can't be Mrs. Timberlake, then I can at least have her hairstyle."  

%-) 
those are my google-y eyes at the thought of Justin Timberlake.  

Kidding. 
but, not really.  
The man cutting my hair didn't know "ombre," so I went with blonde again (thankful for how far the dollar goes over here!).  
You likey???  

Okay it's a bit of a fancy pic, I'm not sure how I got the lighting to happen that way and I looked like a vampire without the sepia tone.  This is the only one I had of my hair, though, except for one where I'm wearing a fake mustache.
Sepia it is, then.   

But that's not what this story is about.  

Well.  My hair was finished a little after 5 PM, and I noticed I had a missed call from Nellie.  Our Chiang Mai friends needed to leave by 5 PM to drive out to the festival, and it was 5:15 when I found this out!  NOOOO!!!!!  We SO wanted to get to do this festival with our friends, it's a very special thing for the Thai culture.  We were SUPER bummed, and although Nellie could've gone by herself, she was selfless and didn't go without me.  :)  awww.  I got on a song-tao (taxi) to drive home, and after taking me to the wrong hotel first, he stopped because an Asian couple needed a ride.  

Divinity at work and I didn't even know it.  

The guy first asked if the driver spoke English, and when he said no, I said, "Well I do, can I help?"  He handed me a paper for the driver with the Thai words "Lantern Festival" written on it.  

PERF.

He said the words in English even though it was written in Thai. 

(me): "Are you trying to go to Loikratong??  I'm trying to go, too!"  
(him): "Do you want to go with us and split the cost??"  

UM CHYES. 

The couple hopped in the taxi while our driver continued onto my hotel.  When we got there, I hurried out and said, "Okay wait right here!"  I ran inside, spieled it all to Nellie in about 30 seconds, she ran and got her purse and we joined this cute Asian couple on an hour long ride to the university where the festival was held.  

We connected very quickly with our new friends from Tokyo, who were in Chiang Mai for 6 days on a visit to a massage school.  They already have careers but do massages as a hobby.  He's a doctor of internal medicine, can't remember what she does.  Nobu and Chie.  :)  He told us an incredible story about getting to answer the call, "Is there a doctor on flight?!" on his way to Thailand.  He was one of those always prepared, quick-thinking kind of guys.  And they laughed at everything.  Very good friends to be with that particular night.  When we got to the festival, we planned on meeting up with our Chiang Mai friends but soon realized this would be a challenge.  

THOUSANDS of people.  T H O U S A N D S.  We decided to stick with our new Japanese friends because they would need our Thai phones to call a taxi anyway.  We wandered around looking for the main stage, when all of the sudden the crowds began ooh-ing and awe-ing.  Hundreds and maybe even a couple thousand lanterns were sent into the air all at once.  IT. WAS. BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!  Photo opp!  :)  

After several pictures, much more walking, and a scary 5 minutes of all getting lost and separated from each other, we finally made it to the ceremony site.  Here we are sending off our lanterns:  

Here's our sweet company for the night:  

And just some others sending fancy lanterns into the sky... 

We never connected with the original friends we intended to go with, but we sure did enjoy the presence of this adorable couple.  We all worked together to light and send off lanterns and get pictures and videos of it all. 

AND 

THEN

As we were leaving the ceremony site, the wind started picking up.  Giant raindrops began to fall.  We turned a corner onto the little side street next to the river, and 

I swear I thought the apocalypse was starting.  

The wind had picked up so quickly that there was debris flying EVERYWHERE.  The lanterns that had gotten stuck in the trees during take-off and were already on fire made it even crazier, plus people were panicking trying to pack up their bbq's and picnics in the pitch black night, trying to put out lit lanterns that hadn't been sent off into the sky yet.  At one point, we all had to dodge a FLYING, FLAMING LANTERN that was not much higher than a few feet above our heads.  It looked like Hollywood... The Wizard of Oz, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Volcano, Twister, any other movie where crowds are dodging large flaming objects that shouldn't be flying through the air.  As scary as it was, it was still more hilarious.  

UNTIL THE RAIN STARTED.  AND THEN IT WAS FLIPPIN' HILARIOUS.  Now everybody was rushing.  And when I say everybody, I don't just mean us 4 humble little foreigners.  I mean HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS of people, kids, babies, grandmas, dogs.  

There was no escaping it.  We were bound to get drenched and had nothing to do except embrace it.  We weaved in and out of hundreds of motorbikes, taxis and trucks along gravelly, rocky, now mud-puddly roads, laughing hysterically whilst trying to see through the TEXAS-SIZED RAINDROPS.  We thought at the beginning that it was tornado, then when our Japanese friends began talking about typhoons, we thought "omg we're in a typhoon!  in thailand!  omg we're in a typhoon in thailand and it's raining fire!!!"  

  

After about 15 minutes of running through the mud and grass in the pouring rain, I thought to myself, 

"Of course I would choose to be wearing my wedge high heels today, of course I would.  With new hi-lights, freshly blow-dried and styled hair, my long jeans and leather purse."  

The price you pay for fashion.  You just never know when you're gonna get stuck in an apocalyptic Hollywood windstorm where it's raining giant flaming lanterns.  Good thing we had our brilliant Japanese doctor friends with us to save the day.

we might as well've jumped in a lake, 

so when we finally reached the place where our song-tao would pick us up, I had no hesitations squatting down in the tall, muddy grass to hide behind a taxi van, somewhat protected from the thought-to-be-apocalypse/Thailand typhoon.  

It ended up just being a really bad rainstorm.  

=/  

haha. 

I did almost blow over one time, though.  That was scary.  I've never felt like I'd be picked up by the wind, but Chie, Nellie & I had to grab each other once and brace ourselves.  

So we're crouched behind this taxi, arms around each other to stay warm, and Nobu reaches in his backpack and takes out one of those hand-warmers that you use when you ski.  He had us take turns holding it on our necks so we wouldn't catch cold.  Then, he took plastic sacks out of his bag and he put them on our heads to protect from the cold rain!  And it worked!  So of course I had to snap a pic - how often does this happen?  

I felt that this picture deserved the "x-large" option.

That's probably a flaming lantern in the background.

Nobu even had an extra shirt in his bag "just in case" that he put on when we got on our taxi.  if you've heard my planes, trains & automobiles story through canada, this might remind you of someone else I've traveled with.  ultra-prepared for any event when all I have to offer is a leather purse and wedge high-heels.  

Y'all need to know that the hour-long song-tao drive back to Chiang Mai included 12 shoulder-to-shoulder sopping wet people from 5 different countries, and it ended with Nobu and Chie giving me and Nellie hand and arm massages.  

Classic.