Laos new year "Pii Mai", is on April 14,15 and 16. It is the time for people to wash their homes and all the artefacts inside. but it also involves throwing water at each other. I was in Vientiane on April 15 and the city was one giant water battlefield... It was amazing.
I arrived by motorbike from Pakkading around mid-day. Time to check-in and change clothes and I was out to go explore the city. I had no idea what I was going into. I had seen people throwing water on the side of the road so I knew it would probably be the same here in Vientiane... It was 10 times more fun. I had never seen this before, traffic jam everywhere, lines of cars and pick-up trucks transporting people with buckets of water and water guns. And they know what they are doing, you can tell they are use to this and have put a lot of thought in the setup. On the side of the road, in front of houses, hostels, bars and coffee shops, there is always a small plastic swimming pool used as a reloading point for buckets and guns. It's also a time when people take their nice cars out, and there was plenty of beautiful old cars running the streets of Vientiane as well as other funny looking cars.
I was amazed and so excited to see all this, I first went out without my camera but I really wanted to take pictures of that show and seeing other people with their camera, convinced me to go back to the hostel and take it. I obviously had to be careful, but if I have an advice it would be not to try to hide your camera all the time; People throw water at everyone so you want them to see that you are holding a camera. No one threw water at me when they saw my camera. They just waited until I stretched my arm up holding the camera out of reach, and only then they would drown me, and only me :)
Probably because I am lazy but also because I am not really good at describing, I let you with a selection of pictures I took and hope it will give you the envie to experience it as well.
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