It is the 5th and 6th month of the lunar calendar in Laos, the hottest time of the year. The harvest season is over and it is time to start the process all over again by planting and cultivating the crops for the season to come.

After Pimai, the Lao New Year, Boun bang fai or 'rocket festivals' are held throughout the countryside in order to ensure that the heavens provide generous rains for the crops that have been planted. The festivals date back to time immemorial, and involve shooting phallus shaped rockets into the heavens in order to create rain for the crops. The most famous rocket maker of them all is Abbot Pha Aacharn Khamtanh of the temple or Wat Sida. He explains the process,

The main part of the bang fai is the bamboo tube. It's gunpowder, meu, is made from a mixture of khee cheea or saltpetre, khee thaan, coal, and a small bit of maat or sulphur. He refuses to disclose the precise amounts, that secret has been handed down from abbot to abbot for centuries and is known only to a select few.

Depending on the rocket required there are two ways of preparing the gunpowder. In order to make the rocket go fast and far, then meu kua is prepared which involves frying the powder mixture in a pan and then drying it in the sun. It is then pounded into a fine powder. The other method, meu dip makes the rocket go slower but higher. This method requires washing the powder before firing, so that it doesn't explode.

The rockets are usually decorated with images of Naga,the Serpent King, an important symbol in Laos Buddhism. Naga the Serpent King is also associated with the mysterious Mekong River Lights.

There is a fusion of animism and Buddhism in Laos which makes their interpretation unique among the countries that follow the way of the Buddha. Rockets have always been associated with cults of spirits and of expulsion. The sexual connotations are obvious. Processions involve wooden penises in violent red colours, and wooden or live turtles are also paraded, to represent the female sex. Puppets are made to simulate sexual acts and men dress up as women in order to shock the spirits of heaven into sending down bolts of lighterning and thunders, and of course the precious rains that accompany them. The processions are filled with saucy jokes and risque chants as they taunt the spirits into sending the rains.

Before the bang fai procession, the rockets are bought before to the Hor Phee which is the altar of protective spirits present in every village. The village medium then performs a shamanic dance in order to transfer all the negative energy from the village and into the rocket which will be then expelled into the sky, ridding the village of bad spirits and thereby bringing them luck for the coming year.

Sadly, the traditions are now being corrupted, gambling is more important than the prayers, chants and processions, the larger the rocket the bigger the bets. In the smaller villages the traditions still persist, but in the larger settlements it's been subsumed into a orgy of drinking and gambling.

But some cling to the traditions, women dress in their traditional costumes, and men become temporary transexuals. Every one has a good time, for at the end of the day, who doesn't like dressing up as a woman, telling dirty jokes and sticking two fingers, or rockets, up to the Gods from time to time?

yechydda,