A Wet and Crazy Time

Today we ventured forth, on the first day of the Lao New Year. There was music and water everywhere. People were drinking Beer Lao, singing, shouting and throwing water. There were pickups cruising the streets with people in the bed throwing water on people waiting along the side of the street to throw water on people driving or walking past.

Within a few minutes we, along with nearly everyone else, were soaked in the 99 degree weather. The main streets were like rivers. Water came at you from hoses, high powered squirt guns, buckets and pans. The entire town is like a beach party, without the beach.

We discovered that children’s swimming pools make excellent reservoirs for water to throw on people.

Amidst all this chaos the temple were full of people offering prayers, sprinkling and pouring water over the Buddhas. The temples were off limits to the craziness going on in the rest of the city, and were an oasis of calm.

It seemed like all the food sellers in town had pushed their carts to their favorite temple so the devotees would not go hungry in between wetting down the Buddhas.The temples often brought the Buddha statues outside the temple so people could pour water on them.