Day 78: Boat Festival

Not sure if I've mentioned it before, but we actually got quite lucky with our timing in Luang Prabang, as there's currently a festival of boat racing happening on the river - large Chinese style dragon boats with approx 50 people paddling in each boat. And today was the big finals day! It's an annual tradition held in several parts of Laos, but the one here in LPB is the biggest and most important apparently!

We had a hotel breakfast and a morning relax, before heading over to the festival and getting involved. It was absolutely heaving, thousands of people around and the entire riverfront area on that side was blocked off and covered with tents, stalls, hastily-erected bars, and people crowding the steep banks for vantage points.

We wandered around soaking in the atmosphere, picking at bits of food and marvelling at the spectacle. It's difficult to describe a similar festival in Australia, maybe a slightly cut price Easter show or something? Lots of people wandering around selling helium balloons to kids, sideshows where you could win prizes throwing darts at targets, loads of street food places and of course the boat racing happening in the background.

The races themselves are very impressive, as you can imagine the boats move along at a very fast pace once they get going, and the water around everyone's paddles just churns with fury. Exciting, even if we have no idea what's going on (the commentary over the loudspeakers was - obviously - all in Laotian). So we just wandered, eating whatever took our fancy though we skipped the dried chilli beetles and the witchety grubs!

After a few hours in the heat, the noise and the crowds we retreated to our hotel for a couple hours of relaxing, and headed back out around 4pm when the last few races were being held. I don't know if it was the finals or what, but the last race of the day was pretty intense! Lots of people captivated, though everyone lost interest once it was clear which boat was going to win.

And suddenly it turned in Melbourne Cup day - the morning was nice and family friendly with a carnival atmosphere, but everyone's spent the day drinking in the sun and it was now party time! Garbage everywhere, people stumbling, starting conversations with us in Laotian, the similarities were kind of uncanny. We bought a couple of beers from a street vendor and wandered through the carnage, enjoying the people-watching aspect of it all.

Eventually as dusk was falling we walked upriver a few hundred metres to a riverfront backpacker joint called Utopia, where they serve almost entirely Western food and very cheap drinks. So had a couple more cheap drinks; Shandos managed to order a Lao dish from the menu while I had a beef burger. Very tasty! And then it was time for our stumble home as well.Read more