The Lao New Year – another huge water-fight!

Pimai, the Lao New Year

The largest and most important festival in Laos is Pimai (Lao New Year), which is celebrated every year on April 13-16. Although it officially lasts for only four days, in reality it lasts much longer in Luang Prabang because of its special status as a former royal city. It is in Luang Prabang that Pimai is the most animated and colorful.

Being a Buddhist religious festival, it is similar to the Thai New Year that we celebrated in Bangkok last year. It is the Water Festival, in which people continually sprinkle – or even drench – their family, friends, and strangers in water, believing it to wash away the sins, impurities, and misfortunes of the previous year and to herald in a new year full of happiness and good fortune. Worshippers also sprinkle water and lotus petals over Buddha statues. The New Year marks the end of the 12-month cycle and the beginning of a new solar year. Sprinkling water isn’t done in just a spirit of playfulness. Emulation of the Naga (the snake-like water diety) is thought to bring bountiful rains during the monsoon season. But the sprinkling has grown into a full-fledged drowning over the years!

In essence, the Lao New Year is a huge water fight! During the festival, armies of young people line the streets with the latest in water weapons, while pick-up trucks crammed with wet passengers and water canons in the back take over the road. The armies on the street and the armies in the trucks mount fights against each other, each trying to outdo the other. Motorbikes are the object of the most vicious attacks. Buckets of water go flying, and no one is spared.

Although the Lao New Year is a religious holiday, and although only 60% of the Lao population is Buddhist, many non-Buddhists participate in the festivities as well. It is, after all, great fun, and a good excuse for a party. It is also an excuse to act out and for adults to act like children in a very polite society that offers little room for impolite behavior!

We bought waterguns to participate, but didn’t even use them, as we joined groups of people along the street and used hoses and buckets instead (even more effective!). We were drenched continually for four straight days! We joined in the fights gung-ho this year, joining the Green Shirts from Vientiane one day and moving from team to team and street to street on the other days. It was all great fun, and we threw water, drank beer, and danced in the streets to the beat of mostly American dance music. The locals often would offer you a small glass of beer (it’s not really an option!) that they pour down your throat after they drench you with a bucket of water atop the head! At one point, we danced with a team across the street from a temple, where the very young boy-monks looked on, full of restraint and probably dying to join in. What a contrast, seeing them quiet and reserved, while their peers were merry-making in the streets. It was a bit ironic, dancing in front of them and watching them watch us. (I did, however, see one young monk take a quick turn with a watergun, which of course is prohibited, and therefore even funnier!).

A parade took place on the second and third days of Pimai. It was very colorful, featuring Miss Luang Prabang atop a buffalo float (it’s the Year of the Buffalo) with six runners-up from the beauty contest of the previous evening. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed because I thought that we were going to see Miss Luang Prabang atop an elephant, but as it turns out, the elephants participate in the parade only during the Year of the Elephant. Last year was a real elephant, this year was a fake buffalo!

Following the float were very young girls in traditional costumes, decked out in make-up with their hair in cones atop their head. Then there were old monks on a float, younger monks who walked behind, men in red masks (representing the Great Ancestors of Laos), varying tribespeople in traditional costume, and a group of ladyboys. Traditional music accompanied the whole thing, along with a crowd who followed behind, pressing to get close and throw water on the parade’s participants and the enthused crowd. The parade proceeded from the fountain to the Xieng Thong Temple, where the crowd, and especially a group around the ladyboys, broke into singing, drinking, dancing, and photo-taking.

The main street, along a stretch of a couple of kilometers, was thronged by a multitude of people, especially in the early morning before the sun hit its zenith. A fair was held at the end of the street. In addition, several religious ceremonies are held during the New Year. Perhaps most important is the procession of the Pra Bang statue from its resting place on the grounds of the National Museum to the Wat Mai temple. The Pra Bang is the standing Buddha image that gives Luang Prabang its name. The 83-cm-high statue is a source of spiritual protection for Laos. Once it is deposited outside of the Wat Mai temple, devout Buddhists come to kneel before it and to sprinkle it with water and sacred lotus petals. Small sand stupas are built on the banks of the river on the second day, as symbolic requests for prosperity in the coming year. On the third evening, a three-naga lantern-lit procession descends the steps of Mount Phousi, and this is followed by a dance portraying the Ramayana epic.

In effect, Pimai is a four-day festival of fun, water-splashing, and drinking, all within the context of Buddhism’s most important religious festival that consists of processions of monks, ceremonial washing of Buddha statues, and symbolic cleansing by water of one’s family and friends. What a fete!