Villagers of rural Thailand also maintain that the festival show penitence to the River Goddess. The lives of the villagers are dependent on the river. Therefore they make an annual show of respect and gratitude to the river by floating a 'krathong' onto the water. The view from the Rama IX Bridge over the River Ping in ChiangMai was simply stunning. The cool disk of the full moon illuminated the night sky.
Fireworks burst in magical shapes and colors.
The river was a band of gold, lit by thousands of candles set into miniature floats, which snaked their way southwards with the flow of the river. The people of ChiangMai also float lanterns or Khom-Loy into the sky during the festival, believed to have been derived from Myanmar when ChiangMai was still a vassal state of that kingdom. The khom-Loy have becomes a specialized art, unique to the North. Nobody is quite certain of the festival's origin, but popular legend has it that it began some seven centuries ago, during the Sukhothai era. According to the legend, Nang Nophamas, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, made a krathong and presented it to the King.