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Luang Prabang is celebrating the end of Lent, so the past few days have been party time (not so easy when the city has an 11:30 curfew, seriously - we have been locked out of our guest house twice and had to wake the owners to get back in).
The people of the city have been busy making floral offerings and gorgeous little boats; they're about the size of a rowing boat usually, with a wooden frame and decorated with coloured tissue paper, illustrations and candles. This evening there was a carnival procession along the main street, the Sisavangvong, with people lining the streets to watch, setting off firecrackers andfireworks above our heads as the boats went past. Cords and I stood just by the gates of the temple (which is of course, beautiful) and looked on as the young monks, dressed in traditional orange robes giggled and took photos on their mobiles!
We had a great stroke of luck and benefited from the kindness of strangers! As we walked along the side of the river, a lovely Swiss couple approached us, they'd hired a longboat to take them down the river to watch the carnival finale and as there were 12 spare seats wondered if we'd like to join them? YES PLEASE! It was gorgeous, just the 5 of us with the boat-driver (skipper?), gently meandering along the river in the dark, illuminated by the glow of candles from all the wooden/paper boats along the banks.
The carnival procession moved to the river, where the boats are gently lowered into the water and drift along, surrounded by hundreds of beautiful candlelit floral offerings. Children swam out into the river alongside the longboats to put the offerings in the water, it was so dark that you could only just make out the shapes of the boats. Big paper lanterns made stars in the sky and we watched somewhat speechless as we got right up close to where the boats were lowered in. Our new Swiss friends gave us their email address so we can send them the photos (hopefully they'll show up a little although unlikely they'll do it justice). What an amazing experience.
Met some lovely girls this evening but the curfew meant we couldn't stay out, so we're all meeting tomorrow for brunch, how nice! We're meeting people from all over the place, Germany, Spain, Chile, Oz, the States..but there seems to be far more English people than anyone else, or maybe we just notice them more.
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