Pee My ....Pi Mai ... Pii Mae ...em, Happy Lao New Year!!

NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS
Well it's the New Year here and it has been quite a celebration! Lao New Year started officially on Monday 14th April and lasted for three days (Alfred: Again, officially!) but it pretty much got going on Friday evening and today was the first day when things got back to normal. The main themes of Pii Mai (my preferred transliteration) are:

• water
• getting your hair done
• throwing water
• throwing coloured water
• colouring your hair, or buying a wig or a crazy hat
• blessing the Buddha statues in the temples with water
• throwing coloured powder
• more water throwing
• visiting seven or nine different temples over the course of Pii Mai and blessing all the Buddhas in each one
• driving around town in pickup trucks with as many people in the back as possible armed with buckets/water pistols/ladles to throw water and have water thrown at you
• as before but installing an inflatable swimming pool in the pickup
• mad karaoke parties that last all night
• a beauty pageant (Alfred: We missed that one)
• drinking heavily and then driving home, preferably without any lights
• throwing more water, especially at any foreigners who happen by

And so on. Actually, it was great fun and a little surprisingly so as many resident foreigners had said they were getting out of Lao for the duration and even some Lao people warned us in advance that it was a bit crazy and over-the-top, so we weren't quite sure what to expect.

What we got was ... wet. Martine, Marion (visiting friend) and I cycled around, visiting seven different temples and getting thoroughly soaked on pretty much every street we visited. We did find the trick was to actually slow down as you approached the water-throwers, so they actually poured the water on you rather than flinging it from a distance. In the temples, people sprinkle water on the Buddhas with bunches of leaves and water isn't thrown around, but frequently Lao people approached us - usually the more elderly - and asked if we minded if they sprinkled us (Alfred: I am not sure about 'asked' - they more or less gestured they were going to do it but were giving you warning).

The atmosphere was absolutely wonderful - fun, light-hearted, carefree and hard to imagine happening back in Ireland without a lot of people getting pissed and violent and generally unpleasant. Of course, the fatality rate in road traffic accidents over the holiday period would make Gay Byrne's hair turn grey (Alfred: Bit late for that) but there were fewer deaths this year than recently, which is about as positive a way as one can put something like that (Alfred: Or you could have just not mentioned it. Just saying).

So here is a huge big bunch of pictures, some of them taken by my Italian friend Maurizio (Alfred: That would be all the really good ones of people actually throwing water!) to give you a flavour of the day. Ordinary blog post tomorrow catching up on more mundane, domestic matters (Alfred: Including glaciers, indicators, acoustics and recipes!).

(Alfred: Usual disclaimer about the way Blogger spaces and arranges these photos - it always looks OK when Ruairí is posting!)