The Boat Racing Festival is one of the biggest events held in Vientiane- our quiet and quaint city gets crazy and crowded with people from all over Laos. The main streets leading from downtown to the river are roped off from cars and scooters, and taken over by stalls selling clothes and phones and food and sticky rice in bamboo sticks.
Technically the boat racing was this weekend, but the craziness lasted all last week, too. Even taking the scooter downtown was near impossible.
On Saturday around noon a bunch of us went up along the Mekong River to watch the boats practice for their races on Sunday (we never went to watch the actual races; too many people). It was pretty neat, but with temperatures in the high 80's and no place to sit but the dirty sidewalk, we were only there for 20 minutes or so :)
On top of Vientiane being too small for such huge crowds, they didn't have the infrastructure or safety checks to deal with the night activities.
For example, these are the "stairs" that lead down to the river areas. If you are graceful, they are no problem. If you're klutzy, they are a huge obstacle, especially when it's really dark.
The beer garden - with live music- riverside.
One of the most special events of the Boat Racing Festival is the Festival of Lights (it might be called something else, but that's what I call it in my head). On Saturday night, along all the streets, there are tables with "boats" made of banana leaves, bamboo, flowers, wire, and styrofoam beads, with candles coming out the top. For 15,000kip, you can get one, plus a box of matches.
Nick and I each got one, and took it down to the river to light them and put them in the water.
Like I said before, there are no safety precautions taken for the festival, so on the muddy steps down to the river, I slipped on my butt and got dirt all over my nice gray skirt.
A boy around 12 was swimming out about 10 feet into the Mekong to let the boats free (so they wouldn't get caught in the garbage that had found its way to the river bank), and Nick and I tipped him 20,000kip ($3) to bring our lit boats out. Of course the candles went out 10 seconds after we lit them, so we couldn't keep track of which ones were ours.
There was a large lit boat in the Mekong that would sometimes let off small fireworks. You can see the banana boats people put in the water in the reflection of the boat.
It was a fun night. Many people drank too much, stayed up too late, and rallied too hard, but I just liked sailing our little boats down the Mekong :)
No comments:
Post a Comment