I guess I can just forget about being dry for the next, oh, ten days or so. It's Lao New Year, and in addition to the visit-the-family dimension to this national holiday, the Lao have some customs of their own. And one of those customs is about to soak my last pair of dry pants. It's the water throwing thing. We'd all heard about it, but none of us was prepared for quite how crazy Luang Prabang gets once it gets going. Everyone, from six to sixty, is transformed into a water gun toting, bucket wielding, hose carrying assassin lying in wait at the side of the road, ready to pounce and pour.
I'm just walking along the street that goes along the Mekong, minding my own business, looking for a new place to try a massage, and there they are up ahead of me, a whole posse, perched on both sides of the street. It's still day zero of Lao New Year - i.e. the holiday doesn't officially begin until tomorrow - but these guys just can't wait. I was already attacked three or four times over earlier in the day by water guns... hung myself out to dry in the mid-day sun only to run into another battlesite around the next corner. My only hope for avoiding them would be to retreat... turn the corner before I get to them and take the side streets around them and back to the banks of the Mekong. It seems like a lot of effort, and anyway, I think, I'm a tourist. It's almost sunset and they are supposed to stop at sunset. It's obvious that I am freshly showered and in dry clothing for the night. Surely they'll let me pass by undunked if I show them that now is really not a good time for me.
Yeah, right.
The posse ahead has a karaoke contingent and a couple of very large speakers. Six or eight people in wet clothing dance in slow circles making buddha gestures with their hands. A comrade on water bucket duty calls for reinforcement from across the street and they trade places. The Beerlao is flowing. I still have an out if I turn the corner now, but no, I'm not going to shrink from the challenge. One of the girls looks at me as I approach. I wave my hand, "no, please," and raise my dry bag in defense.
"Oh that," she's thinking. I can take care of that. She takes my wrist as I try to get by and raises it high over my head. Her brother / cousin / uncle / I can't tell, looks at me as if to say, "you didn't think you'd get by with that lame excuse, did you?" and slowly pours an entire bucket of water over the left side of my body. Grandpa laughs. Mom pulls me into the circle of dancers and shows me how to make buddha movements with my hands. Sister / friend / wife looks me up and down and frowns. Apparently, I have offended her sense of aesthetic proportion. She hands grandpa a small soup pot and pulls him over to me so that he can soak my right side and balance me out. Every kip in my pocket is turning to pulp - they really ought to make money out of more durable materials - but my bag has been spared. Still, it's payback time.
A cousin / friend / son dances by wearing the soup pot on his head like a hat. I take it from him. Little sister gives me a conspiratorial smile as she fills it from the hose for me and I go in for my revenge - a full pot poured slowly over the middle of sister / friend / wife's head. We dance around a little more and someone passes around a giant communal glass of Beerlao, which looks none too appetizing to me. I pass it along without sipping which is probably not very polite, but then how polite is it to give someone a glass that's already been slurped out of by at least a dozen people and almost certainly contains as much hose water as it does beer by the time it makes it to our side of the street.
Did I say hose water? That was Day zero. By the end of Day 1 of Lao New Year, hose water is a luxury. Water pressure is so low that the restaurants along the main street, Thanon Sisavangvong, which has a slightly higher elevation than the streets along the rivers on either side, can no longer get their taps to run. The smart ones have stockpiled so that they can at least wash hands and dishes, but good luck finding a functioning toilet after 1:00 pm or so. Those who can, run hoses from sinks at the lower elevations up to the street and keep their buckets and tubs filled that way. If that doesn't work, they just use river water. You can tell by the smell when you've been doused with river water, but only after the fact. As a rule, it's best to keep your mouth closed whenever you see something coming.
On Day zero, the kids were kind and spared my bag. But by Day 1 we are supposed to have figured it out. If you want something to stay dry, you either wrap it in plastic or leave it in your hotel. No exceptions. If you want yourself to stay dry, then you need to leave yourself in your hotel room as well, because by the afternoon of Day 1 the entire town of Luang Prabang is one giant water war. It's not just difficult to get from one place to another without getting soaked, it's simply not possible. Every street, every corner, every alley, is a battle zone. Nor does it do you any good to hop in a tuk tuk and get a ride across town because then you're just a sitting duck. Every group you pass is going to give you a soaking. Some tourists in their 50s and up think they will be able to stay dry if they play the age card. "I'm an old lady," one of them says to me. "You would think they would take pity on an old lady if she says no." But they don't. No-one is exempt. Not old ladies, not people with huge backpacks on their way to the airport, not people with expensive cameras. Especially not people with cameras. In fact, sometimes the cameras seem to be a special target. Maybe it's revenge of the locals for having been over-photographed all the rest of the year.
No, there is absolutely no escaping getting soaked on Day 1 of Lao New Year. Nor on Day 2. Nor on Day 3, and believe me, by then it's getting more than a little old. When they get tired of hanging out along the street, they pile into trucks and go cruising around town yelling, singing, drinking Beerlao and emptying their buckets from large plastic tubs sloshing around in the truck bed. And just as soon as you start to get used to the idea of river water, the colors come out. Blue water, white powder, black grease. If you're not covered in warpaint, you're not having fun.
The guide book descriptions make this sound like a fairly serious holiday featuring solemn processions where the town's main golden buddha is carried from one wat to another and washed. But there is no buddha in sight and the parades are anything but solemn. In fact, it is almost completely out of control. I think the guide book writers must not have actually been here during new year because otherwise they would have warned people. That's what the people who end up hiding in their hotel rooms from sunrise to sunset for three days must be thinking, anyway. It really is a matter of if-you-can't-beat-em-join-em.
So I buy myself a squirt gun. I also learn a few tricks that seem pretty obvious to me but take the locals completely by surprise. When they walk up with a bucket or tub, for example, I give them a big smile like I'm all game for it, then just as they go to tip it over my head I tip the other side up even higher (generally having the advantage of height) and douse them with it instead. They are left speechless, as if no-one has ever done this to them before, and before they can figure out what happened and re-load, I'm already halfway down the street and out of reach.
Generally, though, you just give up, join the fray, and accept the fact that this is what you're going to do for the next three days. After sunset, the water dousing stops. There are a lot of drunk people around, though, both locals and tourists. The locals are out on the streets en masse, congregating around enormous speakers - the bigger the better - hooked up to karaoke machines. The Lao love karaoke as much as the Vietnamese. And actually some of them are pretty good... when sober. These parties are allowed to go past sunset and you really can't get away from them. There is no such thing as a quiet hotel room. Not anywhere in town. No use trying earplugs either because it's the kind of music that doesn't just enter through the ears but through the bones as well. On Day zero the karaoke machines go full blast like this as late as they want. The one near my hotel went until 3:00 a.m. Fortunately - for us tourists at least - the police enforce an 11:30 curfew on Days 1, 2 and 3.
When the three days (really four) of water dousing are officially over, the solemn stuff begins... people wash and clean their homes, businesses and temples. Locals come from all over to wash various buddhas, which involves incense, candles, prayers, marigolds and pouring flowered water down a long, serpent patterned chalice until it flows over the buddha's head. Everyone is supposed to participate in washing a buddha. That's Day 4. By Day 5 some people are really missing their karaoke machines so they have their own, private parties, which gives them the right to bring the monster speakers back out onto the street again. I get invited to a party at a local bookstore called Big Brother Mouse. It begins as a serious ceremony, monks chanting for half an hour or so to bring blessings to the store's new location, friends and family performing a friendship-bracelet ceremony, but once the monks have gone a truck pulls up and delivers no less than four huge speakers and a couple of microphones. One of the kids who works at the shop pulls me into the dancing circle. By now, I know how to make buddha hands. The communal beer glass makes its rounds and the partying revs up once again.
I guess I can just forget about being dry for the next, oh, ten days or so. It's Lao New Year, and in addition to the visit-the-family dimension to this national holiday, the Lao have some customs of their own. And one of those customs is about to soak my last pair of dry pants. It's the water throwing thing. We'd all heard about it, but none of us was prepared for quite how crazy Luang Prabang gets once it gets going. Everyone, from six to sixty, is transformed into a water gun toting, bucket wielding, hose carrying assassin lying in wait at the side of the road, ready to pounce and pour.I'm just walking along the street that goes along the Mekong, minding my own business, looking for a new place to try a massage, and there they are up ahead of me, a whole posse, perched on both sides of the street. It's still day zero of Lao New Year - i.e. the holiday doesn't officially begin until tomorrow - but these guys just can't wait. I was already attacked three or four times over earlier in the day by water guns... hung myself out to dry in the mid-day sun only to run into another battlesite around the next corner. My only hope for avoiding them would be to retreat... turn the corner before I get to them and take the side streets around them and back to the banks of the Mekong. It seems like a lot of effort, and anyway, I think, I'm a tourist. It's almost sunset and they are supposed to stop at sunset. It's obvious that I am freshly showered and in dry clothing for the night. Surely they'll let me pass by undunked if I show them that now is really not a good time for me.
Yeah, right.
The posse ahead has a karaoke contingent and a couple of very large speakers. Six or eight people in wet clothing dance in slow circles making buddha gestures with their hands. A comrade on water bucket duty calls for reinforcement from across the street and they trade places. The Beerlao is flowing. I still have an out if I turn the corner now, but no, I'm not going to shrink from the challenge. One of the girls looks at me as I approach. I wave my hand, "no, please," and raise my dry bag in defense.
"Oh that," she's thinking. I can take care of that. She takes my wrist as I try to get by and raises it high over my head. Her brother / cousin / uncle / I can't tell, looks at me as if to say, "you didn't think you'd get by with that lame excuse, did you?" and slowly pours an entire bucket of water over the left side of my body. Grandpa laughs. Mom pulls me into the circle of dancers and shows me how to make buddha movements with my hands. Sister / friend / wife looks me up and down and frowns. Apparently, I have offended her sense of aesthetic proportion. She hands grandpa a small soup pot and pulls him over to me so that he can soak my right side and balance me out. Every kip in my pocket is turning to pulp - they really ought to make money out of more durable materials - but my bag has been spared. Still, it's payback time.
A cousin / friend / son dances by wearing the soup pot on his head like a hat. I take it from him. Little sister gives me a conspiratorial smile as she fills it from the hose for me and I go in for my revenge - a full pot poured slowly over the middle of sister / friend / wife's head. We dance around a little more and someone passes around a giant communal glass of Beerlao, which looks none too appetizing to me. I pass it along without sipping which is probably not very polite, but then how polite is it to give someone a glass that's already been slurped out of by at least a dozen people and almost certainly contains as much hose water as it does beer by the time it makes it to our side of the street.
Did I say hose water? That was Day zero. By the end of Day 1 of Lao New Year, hose water is a luxury. Water pressure is so low that the restaurants along the main street, Thanon Sisavangvong, which has a slightly higher elevation than the streets along the rivers on either side, can no longer get their taps to run. The smart ones have stockpiled so that they can at least wash hands and dishes, but good luck finding a functioning toilet after 1:00 pm or so. Those who can, run hoses from sinks at the lower elevations up to the street and keep their buckets and tubs filled that way. If that doesn't work, they just use river water. You can tell by the smell when you've been doused with river water, but only after the fact. As a rule, it's best to keep your mouth closed whenever you see something coming. No, there is absolutely no escaping getting soaked on Day 1 of Lao New Year. Nor on Day 2. Nor on Day 3, and believe me, by then it's getting more than a little old. When they get tired of hanging out along the street, they pile into trucks and go cruising around town yelling, singing, drinking Beerlao and emptying their buckets from large plastic tubs sloshing around in the truck bed. And just as soon as you start to get used to the idea of river water, the colors come out. Blue water, white powder, black grease. If you're not covered in warpaint, you're not having fun.
The guide book descriptions make this sound like a fairly serious holiday featuring solemn processions where the town's main golden buddha is carried from one wat to another and washed. But there is no buddha in sight and the parades are anything but solemn. In fact, it is almost completely out of control. I think the guide book writers must not have actually been here during new year because otherwise they would have warned people. That's what the people who end up hiding in their hotel rooms from sunrise to sunset for three days must be thinking, anyway. It really is a matter of if-you-can't-beat-em-join-em.
So I buy myself a squirt gun. I also learn a few tricks that seem pretty obvious to me but take the locals completely by surprise. When they walk up with a bucket or tub, for example, I give them a big smile like I'm all game for it, then just as they go to tip it over my head I tip the other side up even higher (generally having the advantage of height) and douse them with it instead. They are left speechless, as if no-one has ever done this to them before, and before they can figure out what happened and re-load, I'm already halfway down the street and out of reach.
Generally, though, you just give up, join the fray, and accept the fact that this is what you're going to do for the next three days. After sunset, the water dousing stops. There are a lot of drunk people around, though, both locals and tourists. The locals are out on the streets en masse, congregating around enormous speakers - the bigger the better - hooked up to karaoke machines. The Lao love karaoke as much as the Vietnamese. And actually some of them are pretty good... when sober. These parties are allowed to go past sunset and you really can't get away from them. There is no such thing as a quiet hotel room. Not anywhere in town. No use trying earplugs either because it's the kind of music that doesn't just enter through the ears but through the bones as well. On Day zero the karaoke machines go full blast like this as late as they want. The one near my hotel went until 3:00 a.m. Fortunately - for us tourists at least - the police enforce an 11:30 curfew on Days 1, 2 and 3.
When the three days (really four) of water dousing are officially over, the solemn stuff begins... people wash and clean their homes, businesses and temples. Locals come from all over to wash various buddhas, which involves incense, candles, prayers, marigolds and pouring flowered water down a long, serpent patterned chalice until it flows over the buddha's head. Everyone is supposed to participate in washing a buddha. That's Day 4. By Day 5 some people are really missing their karaoke machines so they have their own, private parties, which gives them the right to bring the monster speakers back out onto the street again. I get invited to a party at a local bookstore called Big Brother Mouse. It begins as a serious ceremony, monks chanting for half an hour or so to bring blessings to the store's new location, friends and family performing a friendship-bracelet ceremony, but once the monks have gone a truck pulls up and delivers no less than four huge speakers and a couple of microphones. One of the kids who works at the shop pulls me into the dancing circle. By now, I know how to make buddha hands. The communal beer glass makes its rounds and the partying revs up once again.
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