We decided to travel up to Laos, in April, for a very good reason. April however, would not be our 1st choice due to the high temperatures and bad air quality. This is the time of year farmers prepare the land for a new season of planting by burning the old crops and as a result the air quality can be absolutely dire.
The reason for our unplanned trip to Laos was an invitation of an old kiwi friend marrying a Lao lady at the end of the Buddhist New year (we have had a number of New Years in Laos Pi Mai Lao or Pi Mai Happenings )
Of course the timing was school holidays/post Easter and airfares were on the high side. So we ended up with a combination of paid fares and mileage redemptions. We got to Bangkok on 11 April, and enjoyed a couple of nights just wandering about and taking advantage of the cool air-conditioned malls. Then we continued on to Vientiane.
In Vientiane we had arranged a transfer through to the Nam Pien Yorla Pa Eco resort, about 75 minutes outside Vientiane and 15 minutes away from the friend’s village. Nam Pien was a lovely spot and a good alternative to a very basic local guesthouse. It is set inside natural forest and has a number of rooms radiating out from the centre. Everywhere was accessed via ‘sky-bridges’ wire rope bridges. The sky-bridge novelty wore off pretty quickly and we reverted to the more unformed tracks.
The Buddhist wedding ceremony took less than 15 minutes and was followed by a wedding lunch for about 20 people. The beers in the photo below are part of the offerings to the spirits – not randomly placed for guests!
Part of Lao ceremonies is the blessing where strings are tried around the wrist for good luck. A lot of strings were tied around our wrists and it is bad luck to cut them with scissors – so a lot of subsequent untying. Later when we had returned from the wedding and were sitting at a table at the resort quietly untying the strings, one of the local staff saw the strings laid out on the table and wanted to tie 2 of them back on our wrists. At that point we stopped removing them and did the string removal later back in our room.
After the lunch, we sat about waiting for 16:00 and the big new year party – 150 guests invited to that portion. The Lao New year was full of beer and food and music.
One of the things Lao New Year is known for, is the process of pouring water over people. The ‘traditional’ way is to gently tip some blessed water over the shoulder/back – that sounds nice- but it always seems to be large amounts of water, and it was often iced water – so it was really cold running down your neck and back. And the other blessing tradition is swipe people’s faces with flour/talcum powder. I thought we had missed that part, but by the end of lunch we were wet and had talcum powder swiped over our faces. It was all good fun and now we should be OK for the coming year with plenty of blessings received.
After our 3 nights in Laos we headed directly back to the airport. Being New Year most of my colleagues were on holiday, so we decided to have a week in Vietnam, and return to Laos for the work portion of the trip.
One of the people we wanted to see in Vientiane wasn’t going to be there when we returned. Unbeknownst to us, Stewart was travelling to HaNoi on the same flight. It was a very nice surprise to be able to catch up with him at the airport.