The calendarLoi Krathong and Yi Peng

The full moon of the twelfth lunar month, usually November. The river festival, and the northern lantern festival that shares its dates.

A krathong is a small float, traditionally a section of banana trunk dressed with folded leaves, flowers, incense and a candle, set on the water on the full moon of the twelfth lunar month. In the north the Lanna festival of Yi Peng falls at the same time and adds lanterns — the paper ones that rise, and the ones hung outside houses and temples.

Inference — the timing is the good news. November is the start of the cool dry season, the measured air is clean, the Bua Tong is out above Khun Yuam, and the rains have left the waterfalls running. A rider who can pick their month can have all four at once, which is not true of any other window in the year.

Every town on this circuit has a river or a pond and every one of them does something. Mae Hong Son floats its krathong on the pond between the two lit temples, which is about as good as a small town evening gets.

Tradition holds — the floats were once entirely banana trunk and leaf, and styrofoam ones have been widely discouraged and in places banned. Buy the leaf one.