After the last post of April 15th, the next day I went into Vientiane to take in a few other places, a temple (wat) and one of the few restaurants that were open. Rather than post a lot of individual photos, I ran all my videos through the DaVinci Resolve editor and made one fairly short 10 minute video. You can watch it below. Enjoy.
Video
Pi Mai Laos 2026
Pi (pee) Mai (my) Laos translates into Happy Laos New Year, which occurred last week from about April 13th through the 18th. The official observance was from the 14th through the 17th, according to the government, with the New Year day on the 15th. I usually go out to Nai’s sister’s house near the Mekong River about 8 km from my house, an easy ride out. The celebration includes house cleaning, sprinkling and washing the Buddha statues at the various temples (wats) throughout the country, water play (a lot of it) among friends and family with buckets of water and high-powered super squirt guns, and eating and drinking, a lot of that too. Which category do I fall into? Probably visit friends, clean my house (a usual daily chore anyway, no holiday necessary), and drinking too much?? beer Lao. But not too much!
It’s mostly a fun time and it occurs during the hottest time of the year, so the water play is usually welcome. Some foreigners living in Laos hate Pi Mai, but mostly don’t mind it or actually enjoy it. Me? I mostly like it. Here are a few images from this year’s celebration.
These photos are from the 15th, when I went out to the farm along the village. Click on them 2 or 3 times to see a full size view. Below is a photo of Nai’s farm, which is usually tended by Nui.
This very new road, opened in January, out to the villages along the Mekong River was a great revelation. The old road was one of the worst around this area that you could travel on. It was a nightmare during rainy season, with no street lights, severely pot-holed, dangerous at night. This new one is great, lit with street lights and very smooth all the way out to the village where I’m going and beyond, traveling along the river all the way to Vientiane.
The new road out to the villages along the Mekong River.
Now, about the water play. Despite the great road, I’m sure I’ll get somewhat wet going out to the village. Here’s what I have to look forward to! However, I didn’t get too wet going out there, but coming back later in the evening was horrible. I got soaked, my glasses got wet ( I couldn’t put down my motorbike helmet visor because it has a dark tint), and I don’t see that well at night. I made it home OK, though.
Not looking forward to this.
OK, I got to Nui’s house without too many water problems. Here are a few of the people who were there and a look at the food we ate, along with the ubiquitous Beer Lao.
Here’s Nui along with her friend, Ms. Tia, from the neighborhood.
Nui and Tia.
This is another of Nai’s sisters, Lot, in the blue dress, with her girlfriend, Bui.
Lot and Bui.
Here Lot and Bui enjoy a little water play.
Lot and Bui enjoy some water play.
This cute young boy of about 3 1/2 years old was given to Nai and Nui by one of Nai’s nieces to look after until he’s grown up, not an unusual practice among some Lao people.
Young boy Ai (pronounced eye)
Here’s some of the food we ate. Plenty to go around for all.
Some of the food we ate.
Here’s one of my favorite Laos foods, grilled fish from the river. Yum!
More of the food, including my favorite, grilled fish.
Lot, Bui, and Ai play in the water from a hose. Looks like they’re having fun.
Lot, Bui, and Ai play in the water from a hose.
Oh-oh. Lot has a bucket full of water and she’s heading straight for me. However, she only got me wet a little bit and doled out wetness to the others around the table. This happened quite often, though, with Ai being the chief perpetrator.
Lot with a full bucket of water.
That’s all for the time I spent out at Nai’s sister’s house. The next day I went into Vientiane to check out the celebrations. I do that in the next post. I’ve also made quite a few posts from past Pi Mais. You can do a search in the search box, but here are ones from 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2021. That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more later.
P.S. Oddly enough, I didn’t get any photos of Nai. I think he was mostly in back doing the cooking. Oh, well, sorry Nai. If your curious, you can see him in the 2016 and 2017 photos by clicking on the links above.
Dancing Bowling Pins
I just added a short to my Youtube channel. You can check it out at https://youtube.com/embed/G8dZeZdFzZ4?si=L3INUQ2DPY_6Po9I
It’s a video about dancing bowling pins, kind of. I recorded this way back in 2007 at Ocean Bowl at Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand. These are weird-looking pinsetters that are STILL made by the Brunswick Corporation. They’re called Boost machines. You can check them out here.
Enjoy.
Thai Trip Report Part 3
Delay after delay after delay, but, finally, here is the final part of my Thai Trip Report, where I spent some time in Bangkok and Nongkhai. There isn’t much to report about Bangkok, so the video doesn’t contain that much about the City of Angels. [EDIT: I removed it as a matter of fact.] However, the Nongkhai section is a bit longer. I always try to spend some time there on a Saturday since there is a street fair every Saturday, weather permitting. So, here’s the vid. Enjoy!
[Edit: I removed the original video I had posted and replaced it with this shorter version. I took out the Bangkok section because it didn’t add much to the video and I reduced parts of the street fair at night and the kids’ dance practice.]
Laos Food Festival 2024
The annual Laos Food Festival was held in Vientiane from January 23rd to the 27th. I usually try to go on the Saturday date after classes at Vientiane College. Here’s some more about the festival from the Vientiane Times:
“The festival runs for five days from January 23 to 27, with stalls open from 9am to 10pm each day. There are 180 stalls, including 165 offering various types of Lao food, from regional specialties to traditional dishes and desserts, and 15 stalls selling handicrafts.
There will also be live performances, demonstrations of Lao sweet making, a talk on small business management and marketing, a fruit carving contest, and a Lao dessert sale, among other activities.
This is one of the most popular events on Laos’ social calendar and is sure to attract a large number of visitors, especially as it is taking place during the Asean Tourism Forum in Vientiane this week.”
Because I only attended the event on Saturday afternoon, I didn’t get to see any of live performances or other activities. Here’s a video I put together of the event.
(Note: I’m quite new at making quality videos, like for Youtube, so this one probably seems amateurish. I will get better as I post more vids. My video editor is DaVinci Resolve 18.6, which I’m also new to using. Will get better at using it, too!)
Thai Trip Report Part 2
We made our way to Patong Beach on Phuket Island, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. It’s a decent hotel that is only a two-minute walk to the beach and some of the rooms have a nice view of the gardens. It’s moderately priced and the staff has always been very helpful and friendly. About the only negative aspect is the rather meager breakfast, but it’s free and will provide you with enough food to get your day started.
One of my favorite ways to start the morning after breakfast was to take a walk along the beach. There aren’t a lot of people out at this time, so it’s quite peaceful. However, the beach lounge chair vendors are setting out their chairs to get ready for the crowds of sun worshippers who will arrive a bit later in the morning.
Directly behind the area where we spent the afternoon and early evening at the beach is the Kudo Hotel, which attracts a mostly younger crowd to its outside lounging area that has a swimming pool. One of the reasons for the age of the clientele might be that at the front of the hotel is the Daily Dose, a coffee shop that also sells cannabis, I believe. So, you can lounge by the pool, toke up with a hookah, and enjoy the nightly entertainment that the hotel provides. (Watch the video below)
Nai likes to sleep until the early afternoon, so he might miss out on some interesting events. One morning, after walking the beach, I went back to the hotel and came upon some folks from what I think is a middle school that’s right across the street. It appeared that there were administrators, teachers and students, including a student band, walking and marching down the road away from the beach, going to one of the main roads in town. They eventually ended up at what looked like a temple area. There’s a short clip of them on the video below, and I made another video of the entire procession that you can also view below.
Overall it was another enjoyable five-day stay at Patong beach and I’m sure we’ll go back again at a future date. Enjoy the videos.
Phuket video:
Patong Middle School Procession
Thai Trip Report part 1
I recently had a two-week vacation in Thailand, so I’m going to do a few posts about that trip. My friend Nai and I spent some time at Patong Beach in Phuket, a few nights in Bangkok and a few more days in Nongkhai. This first part will be about two airports where I had a chance to take some videos. You can see the video I made at the end of this post.
The first airport was Udon Thani Airport. Udon is a city of about 400,000 people, so it’s not exceptionally large and doesn’t have a huge airport. The inside of the airport, like the departure area and the boarding gates, is clean, modern and comfortable, but it doesn’t have that many food and beverage options. Nai and I spent the night in Nongkhai, which is right across the border from Laos. Because we had an early flight from Udon to Bangkok, we took an early (6:30 a.m.) taxi to Udon, which costs 800 Thai baht, if memory serves me correctly.
From Udon Thani, we flew into Bangkok’s Don Meuang International Airport, which serves mainly as a domestic flight center. It used to be the only international airport in Bangkok, but with the opening of Suvarnabhumi Airport in 2006, it was relegated to a secondary role. This airport used to be in terrible shape, but with an upgrade, the interior is now very attractive, and, in a lot of ways, I think it has a much nicer ambience than Suvarnabhumi, though I haven’t been to the big airport since 2019.
One complaint I have about Don Meuang is that upon arrival, it seems that debarking passengers always have to take a shuttle bus to get to the arrivals area and the bus takes around seven minutes (I timed it) to travel from the plane to the terminal. Perhaps a minor hassle, but I like to step off a plane directly into the terminal.
So, here’s the video of the two airports. I’ll continue with my trip report in the next post, soon I hope.
Boat Racing Videos
Here are a few videos of the 2023 boat races held in Vientiane on October 30th.
First is an over view of the course finish line.
This is a stylized ceremonial dragon boat that’s lit up at night, if my memory of past years serves me correctly. I didn’t go into Vientiane at night this year.
While I was standing around waiting for the start of the races, a traditional ensemble began playing right behind me. Very lovely at first, but they kept it up for about 25-30 minutes and it became annoying after a while. LOL
Next is the frantic start of one of the races.
Then there’s the exciting finish of a different race, not the same boats that are in the start line video above.
(When I get more time, I’ll go back and enhance these vids with my video program that I have to learn how to use. It’s called DaVinci Resolve and it’s a free, open source video editor if you’re interested.)
So, that’s it for the 2023 Vientiane Boat Racing Festival. If you’re ever in Laos around this time of the year, you really should check out the boat racing festival in Vientiane. There are also more races around the country at this time, including in Luang Prabang, so there might be other opportunities to take in this wonderful cultural event. Enjoy.
Buddhist Lent
Sunday, October 29th was the day that Laos people celebrated the end of Buddhist Lent. Here’s a short summary of the day from an informative website that has a lot of information about the day. The site says the day was celebrated on Oct. 28th, but the 29th was the actual day in Vientiane.
“End of Buddhist Lent Day is a celebration that typically falls on a full moon day in October. This year, the day will be observed on October 28. In Laos, locals call it ‘Boun Awk Phansa’ where they perform traditional rituals and engage in festivities. The ceremony marks the end of a three-month hiatus for Buddhist monks who return from meditation retreats. During this time, monks aren’t allowed to leave the pagoda under which they meditate. As they are bound to be indoors, locals bring them food in the morning along with daily necessities such as toothbrushes, towels, soap, and slippers.”
Many folks will make or buy small banana leaf boats with lit candles on them and float them on the Mekong River or other bodies of water. For those not near a lake or a river, lit candles are placed on shrines or porches. We did a bit of candle lighting on our front porch. (If you can make out the neighbors’ porch at the upper left, it looks blue. Clicking on full screen, you can see it better. That’s an artifact caused by my phone cam. I could’ve color corrected it, but I think the blue is pretty, so I left it as is.)
And, as always, the day after the end of Buddhist Lent in Vientiane means the final day of the Boat Racing Festival takes place. More on that later.
Some Pi Mai Lao Videos
Here are a few video clips from the Pi Mai Lao / Noh’s Birthday Party last Monday, April 14th. If they show up as a colored test-screen, just click on the play button. If they’re not playing, please leave me a comment. Thanks and enjoy.
The first one is a general view of the kind of merriment that was taking place.
Pi Mai Lao Party from Ron Anderson on Vimeo.
More fun with water.
Pi Mai Lao Party from Ron Anderson on Vimeo.
Suwon and Noh (in the tub).
Pi Mai Lao Party from Ron Anderson on Vimeo.
A few passers by get in on the action.
Pi Mai Lao Party from Ron Anderson on Vimeo.
And some more party goers staying out of the water for now.
Pi Mai Lao Party from Ron Anderson on Vimeo.