Festival of light - the end of Buddhist Lent - Boun Ok Phansa - the preparations

Buddhist Lent lasts for 3 lunar months during the rainy season.  It started on the 16th of July and it finishes the day after the full moon in October - the 17th.  

These are the things that I have noticed happen in Buddhist lent:

• Monks are not to stay away from their temples for more than 7 days.
• Monks and novices get up even earlier in the morning and pray and meditate more.
• I've met people who have given up alcohol for Lent.    
• There don't appear to be weddings during Lent.
• There might be less parties.

There is a great buildup to the festival and it feels like a very exciting time.  All the temples will be decorated with lights and lanterns and the making of these is in progress. Bamboo has been delivered to most temples and monks, novices and people from each village have started making boats. At the festival, they will be decorated with candles and money.  

On the night of the festival, boats from all the village, (Bann) gather at Wat Xiengthong and are then launched on to the Mekong.  Wishes are made for good luck in the future and respects are paid to the spirit of the waters.  Families and individuals can launch their own symbolic candle lit boats.  Imagine 20,000 boats slowly making their way down the Mekong?  This is said to be the most beautiful festival of the many beautiful festivals in Luang Prabang.

  

Making the boats

Wat Aham

        

Novices Thong and Phut at Wat Xieng Moune.

Beautiful photos by (I think) Novice Tay

Candles and lanterns

          

Monk Pheng - Wat Aham

Tin cans having the wicks put in place.

Six to seven hundred candles might be made 

at this temple alone.

          

Melting the wax

       

Monk Thone

     

Lanterns ready and waiting at Wat Xieng Moune

         

       

        

       

                 

Making our own gatows at TAEC.

These are the traditional offerings.  We light incense 

and candles on them and put them into the Mekong to say 

thank you to the river and as they sail away down the river, 

all of our cares are taken with them.

I am now officially "care less".  (that has been said before)

                     

My gatow -very amateur, but it did pass the "float" test.

So beautiful

What Chomkong

                       

All of your health needs met

Don’t know why anyone would worry health-wise about coming to a county like Laos.  At the local market in Nong Khiaw today was a lady selling natural medicines she has grown and collected from the jungle.  She was also offering on the spot consultations.  And if all else failed she even had IM procaine penicillin available should you require!!!!  

Weaving, waterfalls and the river. Nong Khiaw up to Ban Sop Jam by boat

The bridge and Nong Khiaw in the morning.  

This bridge was built by the Chinese in 1975

This map shows where we went today.  By boat from Nong Khiaw to Ban Soph Khong where we walked through rice fields to Tad Mork.  Went for a well deserved swim before "lunch from plastic bags" with sticky rice - yum.

Buffalo - just hanging out.

Is this the best photo I've taken??

Bann Sop Khong

Bamboo - 101 uses.  For use when the rice is harvested

Walking to the waterfall

chick peas growing

A hemp tree

Tad Mork

Walking back to the Nam Ou

The "road" between Nong Khiaw and Muang Ngoi

Blacksmiths making knives - pretty hot work in this climate.  

The man turns a handle on the cylinder on the right and this blows air onto the coals

Bann Sop Jam - weaving village. Beautiful cotton and silk weaving.

What a beatiful sinh.  

See the blue, orange and red sinhs that are under the one she is working on?

Pretty hot and dusty.

Cotton laying out to dry

Leaving Ban Sop Jam

Back home - that's our little Bamboo hut 5th from the left with Jo's shirt hanging out to dry

Around xiengthong

My friend Jo is visiting from home, so of course, one of the things you have to do is go to Wat Xiengthong -arguably the most stunning temple in town.  

Think these go on the prow of the boat for the boat racing festival

Funery urn for royalty?

Some of the glass mosaics

Pre-nuptial photos

Nong Khiaw - stunning part of the world

The view from the bridge towards Mung Ngoi

You can just see our cottages on the right shore

Just a 3 hour minivan trip north from Luang Prabang is Nong Khiaw.  On the Nam Ou river, Nong Khiaw is surrounded by stunning karst mountains.  The distance from Luang Prabang isn't that far, but the roads are in poor condition so it takes a while.  So pleased that Jo is visiting which has prompted this trip.  It is also good to get out of the city.

Heavily bombed during what we call in Australia call the Vietnam war, there are caves where people people sheltered and a danger of unexploded ordinance if you go too far off the beaten track.

Some beatuiful rice fields along the way here.  It's October and some of the rice is ready to be harvested.  This is the far north east of the country with China further north and Vietnam to the east.

Anyone from rock climbing?

Views from our balcony - how hard is this to take??

The sun going down

Jo and Christmas have all come at once

Jo, my friend from home arrived today.  It is so good to see her and hear news of life at home and familiar things. 

And, not only that, I feel like it is Christmas.  

She brought - 

• many beginners books from the op shop for my students to read, 
• soaps and shampoo from our natural soap shop in Castlemaine, 
• numerous roll on personal insect repellents
• AND,,  (I don't know whether this is what I am most excited about ) - thermal long johns and long sleeved singlet from Kathmandu for those few freezing cold weeks in January.  

The stash

I feel very excited.  When I was living Castlemaine, I could have come up with these items in less than an hours walk around town and I wouldn't have even thought to comment on them.   (though the Kathmandu underwear would have required a drive to Bendigo) 

These things are so familiar at home,  but here NONE of these simple things is available. 

So thankyou Jo.  Until recently there have been no books in the Lao language, so books and reading have not been a part of peoples lives.   I can't wait to see my students faces when they see what a picture book is like.

What have I learnt this week?

What a great week it has been. 

A friend who I have worked and sung with and her delightful family visited for 5 days. 

A young man who I have known almost since I arrived became a monk this week. A very gentle soul, it is lovely to see him so happy.  I wish him every success in this chosen path.   In true Lao style, his teachers missed the event.  We believed the ordination was to happen in the afternoon, but no, it happened at 9.30 that morning.

Until Laos, I had not taught English to absolute beginners.  In the last week or so, I have heard my first student read words that he has sounded out on his own.  I think I was more excited than him.

Something that made me think was having an English conversation with two educated very intelligent young Lao men.  We got onto talking about special things we remembered from our school days.  The most significant thing I recall is the day the first man, Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon. I clearly remember being sent home from school to watch it.  I’m not sure if I was more excited by having most of the day off school or the first man walking on the moon.  I spoke of remembering where you were when significant world events happened.  For example, I know where I was when President Kennedy was shot.  (This is really ageing me.  I didn’t understand what had happened but I knew by my parents response that something “big” had happened.)  I remember where I was when I heard of the deaths of Elvis, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morison and Janis Joplin.  Also the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the fall of the Berlin wall. And who could forget where they were when they heard that planes had crashed into the Twin Towers in New York. 

And this is what got me thinking.  The young men I was talking with had been alive and well and living in Laos when 2 planes flew into the World Trade Centre in New York and neither of them knew anything about it, back then or now.  I found it hard to believe that anyone could have got through the almost 15 years since this happened and not seen repeated footage of those planes crashing into the World Trade Centre.  Sky scrapers and New York are worlds away from Laos.  It really brought home to me how in the west we believe our world is the centre of the universe. 

This week, I was also looking for possible dialogues related to hotels, for my students to practise.  Here’s one that you wont hear in Australia when dealing with customer complaints.  “I’m sorry, I want to change my room, the Chickens are too noisy.”    ……………. Only in Laos.