The Lantern Festival in Pingxi, Taiwan

A day after our hot spring adventure, Kenny, myself and Kenny's good friend from Taiwan, Karen, headed east to celebrate the final day of the New Year celebrations!

We were not quite sure what to expect and took off on the MRT (subway) around 1pm. From the MRT, it took another hour on the bus to get all the way out to Pingxi.

I was surprised when we finally hopped off the bus. I wasn't sure at that time how many people would be at the festival but from the looks of things, this town was not very big and already crowded.

One by one, lanterns floated up into the sky. We saw people all over the tiny town painting words onto their lanterns. Karen told us that the words were wishes for the new year. We bought a lantern and began writing wishes for ourselves.

As the sunset, everyone began migrating over to the main stage that was not initially visible when we arrived. Once it was dark the true ceremony began. There was music and then all of a sudden all the lights went out and they released hundreds of white lanterns.

The sight of these delicate white lanterns floating up into the night sky was breathtaking. Truly something special.

After the ceremony, we made our way back to the city center for some food. Seeing all of the people, we thought it would be a good idea to let some of them leave before going back to the bus line. We were wrong. The line for the buses was the longest line I've ever seen. We waited in it for almost an hour.

As we waited in line, watching the steady stream of buses file through the city, Kenny and I tried to calculate how many buses were in service specifically for the festival. Later we asked the bus driver and found out our guess was pretty close. Roughly 500 buses were shuttling people out of the town. With about 50 people crammed into each bus, we estimated that at least 25,000 people had attended the evening events. That's a lot of people!