The First Thing You Notice Is the Smell
Not the candles — those come later. It’s the banana leaf. Dozens of vendors along the riverbank are slicing, folding, and pinning fresh banana leaves into little lotus-shaped vessels, and the air has that green, vegetal sweetness you only get from freshly cut tropical foliage. Someone’s threading marigolds onto a pin. A kid is arguing about which color of incense stick to use. This is Loy Krathong about two hours before it actually starts, which is when you want to arrive if you want to understand what the festival is really about.
Loy Krathong falls on the full moon of the twelfth month in the Thai lunar calendar. In 2026, that’s November 24–25. The name translates roughly to ‘float a basket,’ and the core ritual is exactly that: you place a small decorated float — a krathong — onto the water, light its candle and incense, and let the current take it. The gesture is meant to release misfortune and pay respect to Phra Mae Khongkha, the goddess of water.
Simple enough. But multiply it by a few million people across every river, canal, lake, and pond in the country, and the effect is something you don’t quite forget.
Chiang Mai Does Two Festivals at Once
Chiang Mai is where most international visitors end up during Loy Krathong, and for good reason — the city runs Yi Peng simultaneously. Yi Peng is the Lanna lantern tradition where paper sky lanterns (khom loy) get released into the air. So you get the water covered in floating krathongs below, and the sky filled with drifting lanterns above. Photographs from Chiang Mai during this period look unreal, and honestly, in person it’s not far off.
The main organized Yi Peng event is the CAD Khomloy Sky Lantern Festival, held just outside the city. Tickets have to be bought in advance — they sell through the official site and platforms like GetYourGuide. Each ticket typically includes two sky lanterns, a krathong, and a traditional Lanna dinner. There are tiered options: standard seats in the back, VIP in the middle, premium up front near the stage. The ceremony starts around 7 PM, with the mass lantern release happening around 8:15 PM.
The less organized version — which some people prefer — is along the banks of the Ping River and around the moat in the old city. No tickets needed, just show up. Vendors sell krathongs along Tha Phae Road starting in the afternoon. The tradeoff is that it’s chaotic, crowded, and you won’t get the synchronized lantern moment. But you will get the real atmosphere of a city that’s genuinely celebrating, not performing for tourists.
One thing to know: Chiang Mai has been cracking down on unauthorized sky lantern releases because of aviation safety and fire risk. The organized events have government permits. If you buy a lantern from a random street vendor and light it near the airport flight path, you could actually get fined.
Sukhothai Is Where It Started
The Sukhothai Historical Park — a UNESCO site about 430 km north of Bangkok — hosts the most traditional Loy Krathong celebration, and it’s worth the detour if you care about history more than Instagram moments.
The festival runs for five days here, not just one night. The centerpiece is the ‘Prosperity of the Kingdom of Sukhothai’ light-and-sound show, staged in front of the massive Buddha statue at Wat Mahathat. Hundreds of dancers in period costumes perform against the illuminated ruins while narration tells the story of the Sukhothai Kingdom. It’s theatrical in a way that can feel a bit formal compared to the looseness of Chiang Mai, but the setting — ancient temple columns lit up against the sky — is genuinely striking.
The park also hosts a Noppamas beauty pageant, a cultural parade featuring representatives from all nine districts, and a market selling OTOP (One Tambon One Product) goods from around the country.
Getting to Sukhothai takes planning. There are direct flights from Bangkok on Bangkok Airways, or you can bus it from Phitsanulok, which is about an hour away and has more transport connections. Hotels in Sukhothai town are limited and book up fast during the festival, so sort accommodation early. Agoda usually has a decent selection for the Sukhothai area if you search a few weeks out.
Bangkok: 110 Spots and Counting
Bangkok doesn’t do Loy Krathong with quite the same romance as the northern cities, but it makes up for it in sheer accessibility. The city government sets up over a hundred designated floating spots across the capital — along the Chao Phraya River, in public parks, around temple ponds, basically anywhere there’s water.
The big spots are the riverside temples: Wat Pho, Wat Arun, and the area around Phra Ram 8 Bridge on the Thonburi side. These get packed. Benjakitti Park and Lumpini Park are more relaxed alternatives, though the ‘floating your krathong in a pond’ experience is admittedly less dramatic than a river.
In recent years, Bangkok has pushed an eco-friendly angle hard. The city reported that nearly 97% of krathongs collected in 2023 were made from natural materials, which sounds great until you learn they pulled around 640,000 krathongs out of the water that night. That’s a lot of banana leaf to clean up.
If you’re staying in Bangkok and want to combine the festival with a river dinner cruise, several companies run special Loy Krathong evening cruises along the Chao Phraya. These aren’t cheap, but you avoid the crowds and get a floating front-row seat to watch thousands of krathongs drifting past. Trip.com sometimes lists these cruises bundled with hotel packages.
About Those ‘Eco-Friendly’ Krathongs
The original article I drafted said to look for bread or ice cream cone krathongs as an environmentally friendly option. That turns out to be wrong — or at least outdated.
Bread krathongs were popular for a while because they seemed biodegradable, but Thai environmental authorities now actively discourage them. The bread doesn’t dissolve the way people assumed. It sinks, rots, depletes oxygen in the water, and can contain dyes that harm aquatic life. There was a particularly grim incident a few years back where a massive fish die-off was linked to bread krathong residue. The Pollution Control Department now recommends sticking to traditional banana leaf and natural flower krathongs, which break down much more cleanly.
Some venues have introduced digital alternatives — projection-mapped krathongs where you draw a design on paper and it gets projected onto the water surface. Clever idea, though it lacks the tactile satisfaction of the real thing.
The honest best practice: buy a simple banana leaf krathong from a local vendor (they’re everywhere, usually 20–50 baht), use real flowers and a small candle, skip the plastic decorations and bread experiments. The traditional version was already the most sustainable one.
What Nobody Mentions About the Crowds
Loy Krathong is one of Thailand’s biggest festivals, and the logistics of attending it at any major site are… a lot. Here’s what the travel brochures skip:
Mobile signal dies. At any popular riverside spot after sunset, the cell network gets overwhelmed. Don’t count on calling a Grab or checking Google Maps during the event. Download offline maps beforehand and arrange transport in advance.
The walk out takes longer than the walk in. When tens of thousands of people all leave at the same time, the roads around popular spots gridlock completely. In Bangkok, expect the BTS and MRT stations nearest to the river to have entrance queues. In Chiang Mai, the old city moat area becomes essentially impassable by car. Budget an extra hour to get back to your hotel.
Fireworks are common at larger venues, and they’re loud. If you’re traveling with young kids or anyone sensitive to noise, bring ear protection or choose a smaller, quieter spot.
Also: pickpocketing. Crowded outdoor festivals at night, lots of distracted tourists — it’s a predictable combination. Keep valuables in front pockets or a body bag, not a backpack.
Cool Season, Warm Nights
November sits right at the start of Thailand’s cool and dry season, which is the best weather window for visiting the country. Daytime temperatures in Bangkok are around 30-32°C, dropping to mid-20s at night. Chiang Mai and Sukhothai get noticeably cooler — nights can dip to 18-20°C, and you might actually want a light jacket for the evening.
Rain is unlikely but not impossible. The monsoon season officially ends in October, though late-season showers occasionally straggle into early November. By the 24th, you’re almost certainly fine.
This makes Loy Krathong a natural anchor for a longer Thailand trip. You could spend a few days in Bangkok, fly up to Chiang Mai for the festival, then continue north to Chiang Rai or loop down to the beaches in the south. The weather cooperates across all regions. KKday has multi-day northern Thailand packages that sometimes include the Yi Peng event, though availability depends on how early you book.
Getting the Practical Stuff Right
Flights into Bangkok are straightforward from anywhere. For Chiang Mai, there are direct international flights from several Asian hubs, or domestic connections from Bangkok (about an hour, frequent departures on AirAsia, Nok Air, Thai Lion). Book domestic flights early — prices spike noticeably in the weeks before the festival.
Accommodation near the Ping River in Chiang Mai and along the Chao Phraya in Bangkok gets claimed fast. If you’re flexible on location, staying slightly farther from the river and using a songthaew or tuk-tuk to get there saves both money and booking stress.
Dress code is relaxed — this isn’t a temple ceremony, though the event does have spiritual roots. Thais typically dress nicely but casually. Comfortable shoes you don’t mind getting dirty near the riverbank are more important than anything else.
One last thing: if you’re choosing between Chiang Mai and Sukhothai and can only do one, Chiang Mai is the better pick for a first-timer. The combination of water and sky, krathongs and lanterns, is unique. Sukhothai is for the second visit, when you want something quieter and more historically grounded.
We took a songthaew back from the river that year, stuck in traffic for about forty minutes. The driver had the radio on, some Thai pop song I didn’t know. Through the open back of the truck you could still see a few stray lanterns drifting south over the city, getting smaller. The girl next to me was asleep on her boyfriend’s shoulder, still holding a half-eaten mango sticky rice in a plastic bag. Normal stuff. But I kept watching those lanterns until they disappeared.
