Text by Anita Preston

Photos by Anita Preston / Evensong Film

One festival you should not miss in Laos is the Fireboat Festival (Boun Lai Heua Fai) celebrated at the end of Buddhist Lent (Awk Phansa). Less focused on fun, frivolity, and partying than New Year and much more picturesque and charming it’s one event you must mark on your calendar. In October the old city with its more than 35 UNESCO heritage temples will be set aglow and bathed in the soft warm candlelight of thousands of colored paper lanterns decorating the quaint streets. The festival culminates in a procession of ingeniously crafted paper mythical creatures lit by candles glimmering down the main street to be set adrift on the Mekong. 

Awk Phansa marks the end of Buddhist lent, a three-month period of study and contemplation for monks and novices, and a popular time for laymen to abstain from alcohol. Weddings and public celebrations are set aside during Lent. The end of Lent symbolizes the time Buddha returned to earth after spending three months in heaven. Monks are now free to leave the temples and come and go as normal and people can put an end to their time of austerity. 

Every temple will spend weeks creating delicate colored paper lanterns to be hung on temple eaves and grace courtyards. The creation of the boats to be used in the parade is subtly competitive and each temple takes weeks to make the ingenious floats and lanterns, some in quirky shapes such as airplanes, fish, and even a coronavirus!  

The most prevalent figure is the naga or water dragon, symbolizing Luang Prabang’s close relationship between the Mekong, local folklore, and superstition. Wat Xieng Thong is built on the spot where two rivers meet and is the home of two local nagas that require devotion and obeisance from the local populace, therefore this is the main hub of ceremonies. 

Scheduled events take place over three days around the actual full moon day (falling on October 17th this year) and are concentrated on the peninsula of Luang Prabang, though if you want a more personal experience, every temple will put up decorations and have ceremonies and rituals performed to mark the occasion. 

On the day before the full moon, decorations will be placed around Mount Phousi and a ceremony with officials and religious elders will take place at the temple on top of the hill. Around town, people will begin placing lanterns above their doors in anticipation. On full moon day, it is especially auspicious to give alms at first light and the town will be busy with locals lining the pavements waiting to make merit by giving offerings of food to the monks. You can observe almsgiving at any temple and we highly recommend visiting temples away from the downtown core for a more intimate and spiritual experience. Please don’t forget to dress appropriately to give alms and don’t get too close to the monks.

In the early evening of the day before the parade many locals go from temple to temple to see a trial run of lantern lighting and to see how each temple will be decorated for the hugely popular informal photo sessions The busiest temples are usually Wat Xieng Thong and Wat Xieng Mouan where locals dress in traditional costume and take snaps lighting lanterns. It’s common for locals to walk a circuit around the temples, stopping to light candles for luck and enjoy the myriad of glowing lights 

The third day (the day after the full moon) is parade day. Small votives made from candles, brightly colored flowers and banana palms will be available at many impromptu stalls which seem to pop up out of nowhere on the main street. Buy one and bid your bad luck farewell down the Mekong, making room for good luck to come your way. Parade floats gather outside the National Museum for their procession to Wat Xieng Thong at the end of the peninsula. Boats of different designs will appear to float down the street, lit by candles and sometimes even sporting special effects such as bellowing plumes of smoke and fire. Illuminated by the candlelight these creatures seem to come alive and breathe above the crowds. Various groups join the parade, schoolchildren in crisp white shirts walk with candles held in front, ladies don their best traditional sin, young girls with frangipani in their hair move their hands in graceful traditional dance moves and young boys dress as Hanuman from the Ramayana. Crowds tend to tag along behind the boats and join in with much jovial singing and clapping.  

At Wat Xieng Thong, crowds gather on the banks of the Mekong and the river is teeming with votives placed by locals into the dark watery depths. It is especially popular with youngsters and courting couples to make an offering to the river. The parade floats are taken down the old steep temple steps to be floated down the Mekong. This represents a letting go of bad luck and sending it away while simultaneously appeasing the river gods. As the parade floats float slowly down the Mekong with the current, their candles burn out and they slowly self-destruct in a peaceful and somber end. 

GETTING THERE

Lao Airlines has frequent flights from Vientiane, Hanoi, Chiang Mai, and Pakse to Luang Prabang.