In Laos, the festival that wasn't

Hello friends!

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the region’s brilliant water festivals, disappointing would-be attendees and fans of the annual photo-essays (me).

In today’s dispatch from Laos, our writer compares Pi Mai of the pandemic-era to the usual festivities and finds a country quietened.

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Thank you so much and see you next week!Erin Cook

Pi Mai in Luang Prabang in more celebratory times, 2018 (c/o Flickr user Al King)

Let’s not mince words here: In Laos, it is a big, big deal to cancel a party.

Little brings the Lao so much joy as beer, food, and song in the company of family and friends. Any occasion will do: a birthday, a store opening, Chinese New Year, the Rocket Festival, even Christmas.

And no holiday excites as much as Pi Mai, the Lao New Year, a week-long gauntlet of water-splashing, booze-swilling and contained chaos — always celebrated this week of April, with the hot season at its most ferocious.

Not this year. 

Last month, as part of a national lockdown, Laos’ Prime Minister outlawed gatherings over 10 people until April 19. Lest the ever-crafty Lao find some loophole in his language, he explicitly named weddings, parties, and Pi Mai celebrations.

Interprovincial travel was blocked, cops placed on patrol. The buzzkill deepened last week when the World Health Organization circulated the wholesome hashtag #PiMaiAtHome (#ປີໃໝ່ຢູ່ເຮືອນ). Then this Monday, to show he meant business, the Prime Minister banned alcohol sales for a week -- a borderline shocking move in a country that may have the highest booze-per-capita consumption in ASEAN.

There is good reason for authorities to cancel what is by all rights the most popular and beloved festival in Laos. Two weeks into lockdown, just 19 cases of COVID-19 have been officially confirmed. Laos doesn’t have the resources for extensive population testing. That makes this a critical moment for social distancing to choke off the virus’ fuel: people.

But it leaves the party-hearty Lao in a disorienting, unfamiliar state of affairs. This week the streets should have been alive with celebration. They were silent.

In a normal year, the holiday begins innocently enough.

Families bless their elders and clean their homes, in rituals meant to rid themselves of spiritual baggage and allow the spirit of last year to leave in peace. In temples, monks bring out their most sacred statues of the Buddha. Families come to wash them in scented water. They collect the holy water and take it home.

Pi Mai is the “water festival.” According to one telling of the legend, a king challenged a wise man to solve a riddle. The man is stumped, but he overhears the answer from two chatting eagles. He answers the king’s riddle, whereupon the king agrees — this was the deal — to sever his own head.

Before doing so he asks his seven daughters to pay annual homage to his disembodied noggin, so that the rains may come upon Laos. So it is that the Lao New Year arrives at the precipice of the hot season, right before the monsoons. 

Pi Mai, it may surprise the reader, is not just about worship and folk tales. The flip side of Pi Mai is a hardcore, weeklong bacchanal that will push the most experienced liver to its limit. Veterans recall it with nostalgia and exhaustion. “Water recklessness, overindulgence in alcohol, some prayer and lots of accidents and loud loud music and of course dancing in the streets,” says a falang friend. “But fun.”

“For an Aussie straight out of uni, who was ‘beer fit,’ I was not Pi Mai ‘beer fit’,” says another.

For foreigners, it might just be a street party, but one wonders if it’s also an opportunity for the Lao, so restrained and meek in public, to let loose. People dye their hair wild colours and dust their faces with coloured powder. They mob the streets armed with water guns, buckets, and hoses, trying to soak anyone in range (especially falang with cameras). If the water isn’t always clean, it’s good clean fun.

It’s also the opposite of social distancing, which is why the government moved to deprive Pi Mai of its social lubricant: alcohol. Cops have marched down main street to enforce the ban. Temples have also closed to the public. Festive Pi Mai installations started hopefully a month ago, now sit under tarps. 

And so, instead of gaming the rules, the Lao seem to have gone along with them. With the public party cancelled, people have migrated inside. Some are enjoying civilized celebrations, of “10-ish” guests, with loved ones.

Others, blocked from returning to their home villages, are spending Pi Mai alone. “Government said stay at home,” a friend sighed. “No beer, only dinner, lol.”

I asked him what my mother would ask me: Is he at least eating the traditional plates mom would have made at home? Pork larb? Phan paa fish wraps?

“I can’t,” he texted back. “I am not good to cook.”