Yee Peng Festival is a celebration of the full moon in the Northern province of Thailand. The day of celebration is one day before Loy Krathong celebration day, where the religious event is aimed toward creating good merit.
The highlight and the attraction of the festival are floating light lanterns into the sky, the floating lantern is called “Khom Loy” in Thai. It is believed that the lantern will bring those who float it great wisdom as the light is a reflection of intelligence and will help lead them to success in the future.
Although the Yee Peng celebration is one born from the source of good intentions, it is non-arguable that there are negative impacts as a result of the thousands of floating lanterns that will float into the sky. This includes great environmental impact, as the light dies down and the lanterns fall into the ocean, and while they are floating they are a great safety risk to airplanes flying from and into the northern part of Thailand.
The celebration will be held on the 21 – 23 of November this year. Where a total 148 flights have made a change in their flight plans from Chiang Mai airport. This counts up to over 20% of the total number of flights within such period. 60 flights have been canceled, 44 out of the 60 are internal flights and 16 out of 60 are international flights. 88 flights have rescheduled their flights, 69 out of 88 are internal flights, and 19 out of 88 are international flights.
It is estimated that there will be a loss of around 9,000 possible passengers during the YiPeng festival. Flights will not be able to fly out from Chiang Mai airport after 6.00 pm, as a safety measure from the floating lanterns that will be floated into the sky on the 22nd and 23rd from 7.00 pm – 1.00 am and on the 22nd smoke lanterns will be floated into the sky from 10.00 – 12.00 am.
There will be over 58,000 floating lanterns flown into the sky this year, according to registered number from those who came to apply for permission of floating the lanterns into the sky.
FB Caption: 58,000 floating lanterns will light up the night sky.
Source: MThai
Top Photo : Chiang Mai airport
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