Chiang Mai celebrates many annual festivals. Three are particularly lively and lovely. They are the Flower Festival, the first Friday and weekend of every February, Songkran, 13-15 April each year, and Loi Krathong on the full moon night of the twelfth lunar month, generally in November.

The 3-day event occurs during the period when Chiang Mai’s temperate and tropical flowers are in full bloom and at their colourful best. Festivities include colourful floral floats, parades, music and dancing, and beauty pageants.

This festival celebrates the traditional Thai New Year with religious merit-making, pilgrimages, beauty parades, dancing, merriment and uninhibited, good-natured water-throwing.

People float away under the full moon, onto rivers, canals and lakes, banana-leaf boats bearing a lighted candle, incense, flower and small coin to honour the water spirits and wash away the previous year’s misfortunes.