Most communities in Laos hold a rocket festival each year towards the end of the dry season in an attempt to stimulate the rain. We first heard about this practice in a movie we had seen in Luang Prabang just before we left for Vang Vieng. We had planned to spend a weekend in Vang Vieng and discovered to our delight on the Saturday that the rocket festival was to be held the next day. The festival site was located down on the riverside, where the three launching scaffolds had been set up along with a myriad of street food, and souvenir, vendors. The judges were seated at a long table in prime position, just as we had seen in the movie. At 11am, they were already being served BeerLao by the hostesses!  

It started quietly enough with a small crowd milling around, and some of the rocket crews getting set up.

 

A fourth smaller launching scaffold had been set up for the children’s rockets and a pose of them milled around it letting off a few smaller rockets, supervised only by a few teenagers in the group. I should explain that the rockets are made from a length of PVC tubing, with a plug at the top and filled with a black substance which was the accelerant. Each rocket also had a long stick for a “tail” tied to the sides of the tubing. The larger ones were about 250mm diameter and 6m long and required a crane to lift them onto the scaffold.  An electric firing system to which each rocket was connected once on the scaffold was used by the judges to launch the rockets.

The first rocket was let off just after 11am to much gasping and exclaiming.

As the day progressed, it got hotter, the crowd swelled and got more lubricated, the excitement levels increased, as did the rate of rocket launching, and the commentating and music got louder. After we had lunch, I went back to our hotel for some respite from the heat and the noise, leaving Phil to continue to be in awe of this whole extravaganza of firepower.

When I returned a bit later in the afternoon, the intensity had gone up quite a few notches and Phil had found himself a group of Lao friends as drinking buddies and they warmly welcomed me to the group.

Then shortly after, it rained! The rocket festival had done its job. This cooled everyone down and livened them up at the same time. People were dancing all over the place, laughing, singing, and generally having a good time. The whole area had turned into a mud puddle so everyone was getting muddy but no-one seemed to care.  All the while the rockets were going off and at times there was so much smoke in the air, you couldn’t see the launching scaffolds. Judging the best rocket would be near impossible due to the smoke and the height that they reached.

 

 

We felt that by this stage we had seen the best of the day and so returned to our hotel to refresh ourselves and spruce up for dinner. As we drifted off to sleep that night we could still hear the occasional rocket being let off, and we felt very lucky to have experienced the rocket festival spectacle firsthand.