Friday, October 10, 2014

PARTY TIME!!

DRAGON BOAT RACES AND THE END OF BUDDHIST LENT

It's not that Lao people need much of an excuse to party but this week it was official: Lent was over and it was the signal for - in theory - two days and one night of party time. This would have been Wednesday and Thursday of this week but, in fact, like happens for Christmas chez nous, it all got going quite a bit beforehand with stalls and music and noise and whatever.

The main attraction is the dragon boat races, which are incredibly long and narrow boats with crews of 50-60. There are also sprint races between smaller boats with crews of 12. A few years ago they introduced the novel idea of having women's teams as well!! And there is one team which is composed of about an equal mixture of Lao and falang (foreigner) women (red with yellow hats in the photos). The first races were on Wednesday and the finals on Thursday. We went down around 12 on Wednesday and found a table in a restaurant right on the startline for the sprints and what turned out to be the halfway line for the longer races.


Women's team!
 


It was great fun, the rowing was impressive and everyone seemed to be taking it reasonably seriously without getting too worked up about it all. After the races we wandered around the various stalls and displays (having been joined by our Irish friend Michael Headen by now). It was mostly pure tat (or honky tonk as Michael describes it): stalls selling the usual clothes and souvenirs, some just selling washing powder, nappies or energy drinks; promotional stands (Dao coffee, Samsung, Nissan (Alfred: Michael made the mistake of actually asking the girl on the Nissan stand about one of the cars! It soon became clear that her role and purpose on the day did not have anything to do with answering technical question - or even questions - or even answering!), ETL, computer manufacturers and so on. And food, lots and lots of food  (Alfred: And when Ruairí went back the next day, it looked like it was exactly the same food, though the lettuce was somewhat more wilted in the sandwiches). 


And it did look like the whole town was there! On the way in (and on the way home) we passed thousands upon thousands of motorbikes parked in serried ranks, tuk-tuks everywhere and (in scenes reminiscent of the area around Croke Park in the old days when there was a big match),
self-appointed parking attendants charging a small fee for guiding your car up onto the pavement where you could abandon it. Even the temples were making a few quid by charging 5000 kip (50 cent) for parking your car. And there was very, very loud music, and then fireworks. There were giant blazing model ships which were set adrift once it got dark.

And, most importantly, there were people's individual floating offerings. Everyone, whether individual or family, had a carefully-crafted flower arrangement made of banana leaves and flowers and a candle on top which they lit and set adrift in the Mekong. Most Lao people put some money on as an offering (Alfred: Much appreciated by the small boys who swim out into the Mekong further downstream and rescue the money from a watery grave). I don't know if having your candle go out is a bad sign - I hope not as most of them did!! And, as we set off home, people were lighting giant lanterns and letting them float away into the heavens - beautiful!
Offerings floating on the Mekong


Thursday we headed in again but Martine got a puncture and decided to walk back to the house. I continued on as we needed to find an ATM anyway (Alfred: Yeah, right) but I didn't stay long, it was even noisier and the sun had done a good job of baking the litter and debris from the previous night. And I couldn't help noticing that the food stands did seem to have exactly the same food as the previous day - some of the meatballs looked capable of independent locomotion. But everyone was happy and smiling, there was a wonderful selection of umbrellas, and a great feeling of cheerfulness and camaraderie. Even the presence of armed police (an unusual sight here) didn't detract from the fun.
Bamboo stuffed with sweetened rice
Fried bugs - grubs, grasshoppers and ... other things!
I compared the photos - definitely the same sandwiches!!
         

Martine and Michael with the mother and daughter who made the floating offerings we bought



Not sure if they were waiting to perform or had just done so!





Happy monks building a boat offering, Wat Mixay

Same boat that night

Washed-up offerings Thursday morning



Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Nature Break

Balcony of our lodge
Every now and again it is nice to get out of the city. Our last trip was to Vang Vieng (Alfred: about which you still have to write!) but any other town/city is too far to reach other than by plane or a very, very long bus trip. So while scouring the web, I came across a mention of the Rivertime Ecolodge, only 30km or so from the city centre and reachable by public transport, so we thought 'Why not?' As it happened, our friend Michael Headen also came along with us and we availed of his car to get there and back (Alfred: Well, there anyway. You'll see....).

Massive bamboo stand beside our lodge
And we had a really nice time. As you can see from the pictures (and I will let them speak for themselves as much as possible) the lodge is set on the riverbank and in quite dense forest, plants and flowers and butterflies everywhere. It is fairly basic accommodation but perfectly fine and there is a restaurant, swimming pool (OK, they chopped a big square hole on the floating restaurant and added ladders so you can easily climb in and out), nature walks, a boat for hire, bicycles, kayak etc. A ferry brings you across the river to a lovely little village where we walked through the rice fields, admired some extraordinary breeds of hens and enjoyed being somewhere that is quite clearly not used to many tourists! There is also an excellent Thai restaurant next door which served the most fabulous grilled fish for lunch on the second day!

We came back in a taxi due to the catastrophic failure of the clutch cable in Michael's car but the Thai restaurant owner does a taxi service and brought us home! We will be going again!
Strange animal-headed beings worshipping the Buddha - reminded me of Egyptian drawings.
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On the ferry

Banana flower


God bless mobile phones
On the river


 

They had the strangest chickens in the village




Hanging from the ceiling of the wat


Flame ginger - our favourite flower




Our lodge



Rice fields

Woman harvesting tamarind blossoms to eat

Michael and Martine and their amazing grilled fish!


This was my red Thai curry - awesome!
Cropped from the image above (and slightly photoshopped to get rid of the floating rubbish!).