Festival time in Laos

Party time! Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, went off like a fire rocket for the That Luang Festival. Streets were lined with markets, food vendors, fair ground rides, rock concerts and, the main event, Dragonboat racing. We arrived on the day from Vientiane where we had just partied through a scaled down version of the same event in Vang Vieng. A little unplanned, we tuned up in the middle of the festival with everything in full swing. To get to our guesthouse of choice we had to walked down roads closed to traffic and were twice security checked and wanded with metal detectors. There was a bombing in the capital in 2003 and obviously the government were taking no chances. For the day I too was a rock star. I conspicuously stood head and shoulders above everyone and at the concerts and saw countless eyes of Laos girls shyly looking over at me and taking a few snaps. Shucks.

That night having a few beer Laos, as the fates would have it, I met back up with Janie, Barbara (US), and Tash (eng) who I’d been hanging out with in Luang Prabang. They had been dancing in the Mekong with supporters of a womens Dragonboating crew who were elated at coming second! The next day we all took off to their small village an hour out of the capital to see them. We arrived pretty much unannounced and got a celebrity reception. Somewhere, in a small book, that day will go down in history. Never before had foreigners come to their village. The kids came out and so did everyone else for an afternoon and evening of dancing, drinking and eating. We were so welcome at the Koksay village, so appreciated and we gave that appreciation back. Thanks Vinai for been such a good friend (and translator). In the late afternoon we all marched to to the waters edge where even more men came out of the woodwork to help take their 60 man Dragonboat out of the Mekong and into the hanger. That was a pretty cool buzz lifting and carrying that massive boat to the commands of 50+ Laos men. Click to view video (2mb) or right-click > save target as

So I loved Vientiane also, bouyed by its carnival atmosphere. I took a few other trips including a trip to Wat Sok Pa Luang in the woods for the best Sauna and Massage I’ve had yet, The Beer Lao factory (we went in hoping for a free taster and got a tour and the Xieng Khuan Buddha park, a realized artistic vision of large concrete works inspired from Buddhism and Hinduis.

From Phonesavan I had spent 2 days in Veng Vieng prior to reaching Vientiane. A largely Farang Town, it didnt inspire other than its beautiful limestone cliffs that bear down from across the river. I did do a Kayaking tour here down the Nam Lik river which was pretty wicked and found out (as I capsized) that Kayaking through light rapids is more about control than the brute paddling. Along river we stopped for a 8metre platform jump that I did, and went through the Nome cave. Nothing like caving in Waitomo, we were given only two candles rather than flashlights to help us navigate.

Sorry, getting behind with my postings. I’ve got more to add on this one when I get back from Halong in North Vietnam. Hanoi is an amazing city!

ps. Happy Birthday Claire

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 at 1:56 am and is filed under Laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.