YEE PENG
16 November
post by scott
Yee Peng is literally translated as the full moon of the second lunar month of the Lanna (northern Thai) calendar. It is most prominently celebrated in northern Thailand around Chiang Mai and is about paying respect to the Buddha and making merit. On this night (and the whole week around it) people release rice paper lanterns all over the city, but the largest congregation is out at the Mae Jo Agricultural university, about half an hour out of Chiang Mai. Because everyone within cooee wants to be there, and the bottleneck leading into the place, it is notoriously difficult to get there and away – we had read on tripadvisor of people getting stuck in traffic jams for hours and other organising transport months in advance. Hence we headed there a few hours early in a tuk-tuk with the friendly Nui and made sure he would be there to pick us up after. Nui used to be a mahout but unfortunately his elephant had been killed by ivory poachers and so he has now been driving tuk-tuks for many years.
Going to a Buddhist festival is a bit different from the Big Day Out or in fact any festival in Australia. When we walked through the gates there was no security pat down, just a corridor of young students who greeted every new punter with an enthusiastic “Sawadee Ka, welcome to Yi Peng” and a big smile. We thought they would get sick of it but when we left 6 hours later they were still there along with the smiles! The main difference though was that everyone was sober! People milled about quietly in their white clothes and sat on the grass listening to the soft music. Since everyone was there to make merit there was no danger of thievery either so we could leave all our stuff in a pile on the ground and walk around to explore with no worries. We got there at about 4pm and had just missed the important ceremonial offering of robes to monks. Now it was just a waiting game until dark fell so that the lanterns could be released.
As the sun fell behind the horizon and the field started to fill up with people there were a few briefings and practices of how to prostrate correctly before the Buddha, while slowly chanting “Kraaaaap”. The head (?chief ?boss) monk turned up and gave a long reading in Thai while the stern voiced MC would interject periodically – “Do NOT release the lanterns yet, I repeat do NOT release the lanterns”. The flow of lanterns from outside the grounds was constant by this stage, and it seems a few people inside couldn’t help themselves either! Most were the run of the mill standard lantern but some fancy ones dropped a trail of blazing fireworks from the bottom. The most dangerous of all were the ones which caught fire completely and dropped perilously into the crowd as a waxy fireball (the bottom burning part was made of a thick wax impregnated paper).
Finally the moment came. By the time the monks reading had finished it was completely dark with just the light from the full moon peeking from behind clouds over the statue of the Buddha. We wrote the names of our departed loved ones on the lanterns and lit them up in unison with the huge crowd around us. Stern voiced man gave the final ok and up they went, like a swarm of fluorescent jellyfish rising up into the sky. It was a truly amazing sight and the feeling of goodwill among the crowd was huge. Check it out:
After the big release was over there was a brief fireworks show which called curtains on the night. We ducked out quickly and luckily managed to beat the huge crowds home!