Laos' Rocket Festival

First written : May 2006. I might as well get this out of the way first.

The Lao celebrate a festival known as Bung Bangfai aka rocket festival. It is usually in May and it is basically a fertility rite held to celebrate the coming of the rainy season. I let that sink in for a while. A fertility rite for farmers to ask for bountiful rain. Singapore is not a farming society and we probably won't ever understand how important rain is for the farmers all around the world. Every ancient farming culture has its own fertility rites to make sure that they will have a good harvest. Farmers in Europe throw oats, blessed by their priests, at each other. In medieval England, the farmers had this ceremony called "wassling". Basically, the farmers ate wheat cakes dipped in cider and then offered a piece to an apple tree. The farmers then banged pots and fired guns into the sky in order to scare the bad apples spirits away. To call for rain, ancient celtic farmers walked the fields barefooted for a day and offered prayers and offerings. And if that failed, they offered a human sacrifice. Ouch.

Lao farmers have roughly the same concept (no, they don't kill people). Their interesting theory is that God of Rain is a lazy bastard and once every year, they must arouse him from his lazy slumber (maybe God of Rain is busy playing Playstation and carousing with other ladies immortals) by doing the following things:

(a) shoot rockets into the sky to prick at all those f_ckers in heaven to wake up and start doing their job of bringing rain down;
(b) sing, dance and make as much noise as possible to wake up those said f_ckers in heaven;
(c) men to cross dress as women (the usual bras and skirts) and parade around so that the f_ckers in heaven will get offended at their impropriety and summon lashing rain to wash out their unholy parade;
(d) just be a annoying dumbass.

I am not making the above up by the way. They really do such things every year designed to try to piss the God of Rain off every year.

Pictures.

(procession of dumbasses with bamboo rockets)

The whole village turned out at this padi field to watch the rockets being launched into the air. Small rickety bridge which the village built to cross the canal to the field.

Dumbass in skirt making last minute alteration to his homemade rocket.

Rocket festival is a big thing in Laos. Every village has a competition to see whose rocket can fly the highest with the most beautiful trajectory. I have seen drunken fights broke out when contestants dispute the judges' decision. Rockets are homemade using some fertilisers (usually some cowdung if one couldn't afford chemical fertiliser) and some battery acid. The guy shoving in shit (not joking, real cow dung) into the rocket above is apparently the resident rocket maker. He commands great respect (see all the attentive men looking at him shoving shit) in the village.

Successful take-off of a home made rocket. Over the years, the Rocket Festival develops another custom. You build a rocket, made a wish and the higher it lies, the more likely that your wish will be fulfilled.

As you can see, these rockets are not exactly up to ISO standards or made with industry safety in mind. What do you expect from bullshit and battery acid in a plastic container? For every rocket that took off, there is one that exploded prematurely. I present to you some pics of homemade rockets exploding and almost killing Lao dumbasses who just loved to stand close to the action.

(Must be a cheaply made cow dung rocket. Couldn't even hold it together)

(Exploded even before take off)

(This one flopped onto the padi field and exploded among the people in a fury of smoke and sparks)

Yet another strange and quirky festival from Laos. The funny thing is that it actually rained the day after.