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The Lao Lao whisky bit back with a vengeance this morning as I was feeling pretty worse for wear. It was a role reversal as Sarah is normally the one who suffers most but she was annoyingly hyper today. I did manage to drag myself out of bed however, get showered, then head down the road for some noodle soup.... First mission of the day accomplished.
On route Sarah managed to acquire some new sun glasses as she inadvertently sat on hers a couple of days previous while chatting with her friend Lacey. We headed out int the heat of the day and found that intermittently on walking the street you would suddenly jump out of your skin when a loud bang was heard. People were setting off fire crackers and random fireworks. We learnt that today was actually a local holiday known as the Bun Bang Fai or rocket festival, which is held every year in May. Its a festival that celebrates the bringers of rain in Lao, the rockets are fired into the sky to ask the gods for lots of rain and a plentiful rice harvest. The rockets can ridiculously long and can carry up to thirty kg of gunpowder. The locals meet on the small island across the river and set off these huge home made rockets. When I mean various sizes, some of them are huge! We went to the island and saw they had set up three launch pads of different sizes and some of the rockets were at least fifteen feet in length. The sound of them igniting and lifting off would not be amiss at the Kennedy space centre on shuttle launch day, it is crazy. The winner of the highest rocket would be regarded with great respect and if yours fluffed and didn't fire then good luck.
This is also combined with various pick up trunks whizzing around the streets with jolly Laos locals launching fire crackers and other small fireworks from their hands into the air whilst drinking Lao whisky. Health and safety would have a field day with this on at home I tell you.
had to endure some pretty mediocre movies on the HBO channel through the day but I could not really manage a lot else. You always heard the rockets going off, some sounding like a plane pilot turning on the thrusters for take off.
Everything had to die down in the evening however as thunderstorms rolled in again causing heavy downpours. These continued throughout most of the night producing bright flashes and thunder that practically shook our room. The stormy season was definitely upon us!
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