Chiang Mai Missile Attacks
Sunday, November 16th, 2008. After arriving in Chiang Mai, Sara and I headed out to find dinner. We walked through the night market, found some cool shops, and eventually ended up at “The Good View” restaurant right along the river.
During our walk, Sara and I noticed a particularly bright orange “star” in the sky. Sara asked me if I thought it was a planet, and I said that while I wasn’t sure, that seemed like the right answer. It was plainly visible on a lit street just after sunset. We thought nothing of it and went about our evening.
About an hour later, we found ourselves noticing another orange spot in the sky. However, this was MUCH larger and moving fairly slowly, but still quick enough to be missed after a couple of minutes. Intrigued, Sara and I watched it go for a while, and when it kept getting brighter (seemingly closer) Sara ran outside the restaurant, camera in hand, to take a photo.
I talked about what it could be – I reasoned that is must be something burning up in the atmosphere. Whatever it was, I thought, it must have been pretty big to be so visible and to burn so slowly. We talked about “near misses” and calamities caused by asteroid strikes (I even mentioned the Van Allen belt – dork alert). A couple of minutes later, we noticed two more. Then another. My concern was palpable to Sara – either the Earth is moving through an asteroid field (bad) or those aren’t asteroids burning up…those are rocket motors!
Rockets? Missiles? Not possible. I was confident of that…or was I? While I hadn’t shared my missile worries with Sara, she seemed just as concerned as I was. Whatever it was we were seeing, it wasn’t natural.
It was at this point that a tall German man (German accent anyways) stepped in front of my line of sight. As I was creening around him to try and get a look, he seemed a little irritated. “What is this guy’s problem, staring at me?” When he looked at me like “What the hell” I pointed in the sky and showed him what I was staring at. For a moment, he seemed a little lost, then he told me he saw thousands of them a couple of days ago. “Meteors?” I asked, thinking that was the only other possibility, and he said in a German accent “Vhat? No. Not meat-e-ors – ba-loons. Zey have a festival here…”
I was relieved – it was just a balloon. The German man explained a little more about Loi Krathong – the Thai’s traditional November festival – and the fact that a few days ago balloons like this filled the sky.
The man noticed my relief and he laughed when he realized I had thought the worst. While I didn’t tell him about my missile theory, he said “Don’t worry friend, it’s not the Russians!” Then he and his friend laughed, as did Sara and I. The powers of the human imagination know no limit. Hoepfully I won’t get so carried away next time.
