Fingers and Toes

I just read what I wrote about this festival on last year's blog and suffice to say, it hasn't changed a bit. There are still just as many people losing their fingers and toes to all the fireworks. Bangkok has prohibitted all fireworks in the city, so as it would happen the festival is bigger in Chiang Mai than anyplace else.
This year Pui and I decided to celebrate it in the traditional thai fashion by building a Kratong (a little floating candle) and send it down the river. The building of it is actually quite fun; you use misc. parts of a bananna tree and piece it all together with some flowers. Check out the photo album to see the 'making of'.
Getting it to the river however, wasn't quite as much fun. The problem is every other person in Chiang Mai has the same idea. We waded through about a mile and a half of shoulder to shoulder traffic (and people throwing random firecrackers) to even get to the river. Then we walked down this little ramp to the river that is right below the biggest bridge in the city. Having people see how close they can fire a bottle rocket at your head without actually hitting it was more fun than I could handle.
After watching the video from last years festival, I was reminded that it's not all bad. However, I took another video this year that captures some of the stress.