From Hoi An's Full Moon Lantern Festival to the Nagasaki Lantern festival, these floating lantern festivals will brighten your life here’s where to visit them in 2023
6 Lantern Festivals That’ll Brighten Your Life AFAR 1/20/2021
Photo by adisornfoto/Shutterstock
Traditional lanterns are commonly used to commemorate cultural and spiritual celebrations around the world.
Note: Though COVID-19 has stalled a lot of travel plans, we hope our stories can offer inspiration for your future adventures and a bit of hope.
Sky lanterns can be traced back thousands of years to the Eastern Han Dynasty in China (25–220 C.E.), when the bright, floating objects were used not only as light sources but also to relay important military signals across long distances. Today, however, the traditional lanterns hold a slightly lighter significance, as they’re commonly used to commemorate cultural and spiritual celebrations across Asia and in various destinations around the world with large populations of Asian descent. From a floating lantern festival in Hawaii to Vietnam’s monthly full moon festival, here are six radiant lantern celebrations that take pl