New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is a much bigger event in Chiang Mai then the virtually non event that Christmas day was. The main sqaure of Chiang Mai was filled with stalls selling food, crafts etc, a huge stage, lighting rigs, cameras, big screens and a VIP seating area. Through the evening they had various performances; dances and singers and various people getting up to say things. But it was all in Thai, and the screens didn't have subtitles, so we watched some of the dancing but mainly chose to wander the stalls that filled the streets in the area around the square. There seemed to be no real countdown, and through out the night people set off their fireworks and lanterns. The latter; large paper hotair balloons, filled the sky as people let them go "sending off all their good wishes for the year" as is the tradition here. At roughly midnight the sky was a blaze with the "offical" fireworks, set off from various hotels etc. We sat on the old wall just above the gate and had own little countdown with Americans around us. Then we enjoyed the splendor of the fireworks, and they were magnigicant, exploding right overhead in amazing vivid greens, reds and blues. Not as brilliant as Syndey or New York, but still fun to watch.