We made the short (for laos) five-hour hop to the capital just in time for the start of Pii Mai: laos New Year. This officially three-day long festival of the lunar New Year is celebrated with a week-long, countrywide water fight. We armed ourselves with water pistols and got thoroughly soaked. Everyone in Vientiane had taken to the streets, either stationed by tanks of water and hoses soaking passersby or in the back of pick-up trucks armed with water balloons and getting soaked as they drove by. The whole thing is extremely good-natured and involves everyone - we saw groups of men in their seventies in natty hats chasing each other with water pistols.

The festival marks the start of a New Year, and to signify this Lao people literally wash everything clean. Buddha images are washed and blessed with purified water, houses are cleaned from top to bottom and then everyone dresses up in their best new clothes and goes out to bless friends and neighbour with water too. Lots of it. We found a friendly group of locals who let us share their hose, and their beer (about twenty full buckets of water over my head was a small price to pay) and threw ourselves into it (literally for me: wet floors are slippy). Chris's particular favourite was to get otherwise dry people in the ear, or through the slightly open windows of passing cars. I especially enjoyed aiming under the helmets of people on motorbikes. Not that we got carried away or anything...

We also found time to visit Pha That Luang the most famous and beautiful temple in laos, where we got to see the purification of the Buddhas, and to take in the rather lovely city itself. As well as squeezing in a few games of very retro-style ten-pin bowling, which is huge in laos. Chris played well, whilst I was a little more erratic - in three games I managed two strikes, and about twenty zeroes. I think I'll stick to water fights.

Labels: Laos, Vientiane