The day of Loy Krathong itself, the full moon of the 11th month, starts clear and bright. Soon after coffee I jump on a songthaew and head up to Doi Sutep high above Chiang Mai. The songthaews are the cheap form of transport here in Chiang Mai, painted a flat red, they are converted pickups with bench seats in the back. You can jump on one around town for 10B or you can hired one for a specific journey like this morning, having first negotiated the fee you're going to pay.. The songthaews are powerful beasts and they cope with the very steep climb up to the temple without slowing to a crawl, but it is still the motos that zip past on the ascent.
Doi Sutep is a beautiful temple, probably the second most revered in Thailand, but that makes it very popular too and this Sunday of Loy Krathong is not the day to experience it in peace and quiet, no matter, what you lack in serenity, you gain in spectacle. Many, many Thais are here paying their respects and circling the sacred stupa three times holding lotus blossoms in wai clasped hands incense curling thickly into the still morning air.
Visit over and after climbing down the long naga staircase from the temple and locating my songthaew, I headed back into the city and found lunch in a small Issan restaurant near Wat Chiang man.
In the afternoon I went off again around the old city to the main temples... I started with Wat Pra Sing, one of the
most important and then walked down the central street to Wat Chedi Luang. I thought it was strange but as I walked past Wat Pan Tao there was a brass band and the small temple was extravagantly decorated with colourful lanterns and banners. I like this temple and every time I come to Chiang Mai I always drop 100 satang into the 100 brass bowls and make a donation, it is supposed to bring luck and guarantee your return to the city... but not now as it looks very busy.
So I head off the Wat Chedi Luang next door. This is one of my favourite temples in Chiang Mai. It has an enormous ruined Chedi, it was built so big that it couldn't support it's own weight and soon after it was completed it collapsed. It has been only partially restored, but contains some lovely Buddha images in the upper niches and some nice stucco elephants lower down.
As I left the temple and walked back up the road to Wat Pan Tao, a man in black with a name tag approached me and said: "no photo, king come". Rather surprised I then noticed the road was closed off and I was within ten feet of the entrance to the temple. And true to his word, ten minutes later, the king of Thailand did indeed pass within a few feet of me. I saw him get out of the car with his wife, the queen, onto a red carpet stretching into the temple and under a large red parasol the entourage slowly disappeared inside. How often does that happen I thought.

In the evening I walked down Tha Pae rd to the Narrowwat bridge and watched the mayhem of lanterns and fireworks and then down along the rivers edge to see the krathongs, small banana leaf boats with a candle and some insence being realeased onto the slow moving Ping river. Then returning to the bridge I saw that the parade of floats had arrived along Tha Pae road, so I walked back a bit taking photographs. It is a magical night in Chiang Mai and one that goes on very late.