Chiang Mai New Year
The second half of our trip to Thailand over new year's, after adventures in Bangkok and Phetchaburi , was spent much further north, in Chiang Mai province. We departed Bangkok on New Year's day, once again flying on a day when no-one else was silly enough to travel. This led to one of the smoothest flight experiences I've ever had; no line anywhere, easy security, and no traffic (sadly, as we were to later discover, this is not exactly representative of air travel in Thailand). We arrived in Chiang Mai in the late afternoon of December 31, and mostly spent that afternoon chilling around our hotel in the outer part of the city. Chiang Mai is actually well-known within Thailand for its New Year's celebrations, particularly the releasing of floating lanterns at midnight. We expect that to lead to gridlock within the city, but things were actually quieter than we expected- there wasn't too much traffic on the roads, the street food places had only small lines, and m