Boun Souang Heua Festival
Here I am in Luang Pragang for the End of the rain festival. All weekend there have been Dragon Boat Races, boat parades, fireworks, parties… celebrating the end of the rainy season. The funny part is that its been bucketing down for the last 3 days and today has been raining non-stop ever since this morning. I’m sitting in an internet cafe whiling away the day and escaping the rain. The festival has been a riot tho. It was a special treat to be able to watch the boat races for me. I came here specifically to watch the races, but missed them by a few hours. Fortunately, the large annual all village boat race was only about 40mins away on Saturday. There were thousands of people all gathered along the banks of the river and in the river watching some really good competition. 
These boats are a little different than the ones we race back home. Our boats only have 20 or 22 people in them if u count the drummer and steersman. These boats have about 30+ and I’ve seen some with 50+ in them in the Capital. They have 3-4 steersman and no drummer. 
The winning teams also were amazing in their unison. I’m not positive on the distance they raced, but the winning time was in the low 1:40s and it looked like a sprint. If that’s for 500M, that’s pretty quick. I remember for the events that I was at, the winning times were in the 1:50s for 500M. Last night was the best part of the festival. Thousands of people were out regardless of the rain celebrating with thousands of boats and floating flower bouquets lit up with candles and sent down the river. Some boats caught on fire before getting into the river other’s would have made a Viking funeral proud while most just sailed down the Mekong with twinkling lights for all to see. I was a bit naughty and sorta lanunched whistling bottle rockets in the general direction of several of the boats. I personally was not responsible for any of the viking ships. It was sorta like Venetian night in Chicago with fireworks and lit up boats, but on a model boat scale (seeing as no one seems to own sail boats around here). Well, that and the food vendors had a slightly different menu than burgers, hotdogs… as well. Thank God there were no giant Crayola blow up crayons here either.
Tags: Lao, Laos, Luang Prabang, Singapore, Vietnam
Kane
Damn, I wish I was there. I could SCUBA in Cairns any time. That’s a once-a-year experience! Should have forewarned me and I’d have got a flight out last week 🙂
Hey, it was great, but I doubt u woulda wanted to pay $700 to fly here all the way from Oz. I’m still trying 2 work out how I’m gonna get there from here cheaply.
Here’s how I did it:
Well, Laos to HCM City somehow. That shouldn’t be expensive.
Then use Tiger Airways to get to Singapore and then to Darwin. Cheap as. You’ll find the internal flight from Darwin to anywhere else in Oz is probably the most expensive one.