The Laotian New Year is the main national holiday in Laos, and is celebrated throughout the country. The brightest and most colourful celebrations go on in Luang Phabang – with five days of fairs, concerts, beauty contests, and a colourful street parade in national costume. But the most popular tradition during the New Year holidays is that people pour water on each other in the street – in a fun and friendly way. People believe that their sins are washed away by the water. The second day is the ‘wettest’ day of the New Year festivities – the day that isn’t quite the Old Year, and not yet the New Year either – Laotian people call it “the day of nobody’s day”. 

During all the evenings of the New Year festival, festivities go on at the Old Stadium – where they also set up a seasonal market for entertainment and shopping. There huge numbers of children’s attractions – inflatable slides, roundabouts, dodgem cars, and competitions with prizes. It’s like a kind of market with elements of a commercial exhibition, where the best stands offer shows and advertising campaigns. It feels like the entire city population has come to the New Year market! 

A Beauty Show called “Miss Laotian New Year” is held on the Main Stage of the Old Stadium. There’s a jury panel sitting in front of the stage, while the audience are in different zones – either by invitation, or with bought tickets. There’s music and dancing between the appearances of the contestants. 

The procession goes along the main street of Luang Prabang, including the entrants and winners of the Beauty Contest, monks, and representatives of different regions and districts of the country. 

All of the parade participants are dressed in beautiful national costume. Quite a few also play traditional musical instruments. 

The joyful celebrations of the New Year festivities are also somehow tinged with sadness – the carefree yet cautious way people soak each other with water. Tourists mostly divide into two camps on this – those who decide to remain resolutely dry, and those determined to get as wet as the locals do. I almost had the idea that the tourists had bought a ticket to come and get soaked. Tomorrow they will fly home – but the Laotians will be getting up to another day of the daily grind of backbreaking work, until the next New Year arrives. 

They build thousands of sand stupas on the banks of the Mekong River at New Year. The stupas ritually bar the way of evil spirits of the Old Year, preventing them going to the New Year. The stupas are decorated with prayer-flags. 

The Sai Bat ceremony – of giving alms to monks – is another ancient New Year tradition. In their usual lives, monks receive alms in the morning in many cities throughout Laos. But the New Year’s Eve donation has a special significance. On the second day of the New Year, monks will gather before dawn at the former Royal Palace – today’s National Museum. The townspeople who come to the ceremony take their place on mats, laid out along the sides of the avenue of the park. Most of the attendees are formally-dressed women, and many bring their children with them. A few chairs are placed by the steps leading to the palace – for VIP attendees.