Rocket Festival

Nong Khai province is famous across Thailand for its Rocket festival, held each year in Spring on the full moon before the start of the rainy season. Or so they hope. The intent of the rockets (kind of like giant bottle rockets) is to alert the Gods of the sky that it is time to allow the rains to fall. There are several mythological stories that accompany the tradition, involving various Toad Kings, evil squirrels, serpents, epic battles, and long held promises. But sure enough, the day after we watched the villagers shoot rocket after rocket into the blue sky, the heavens opened up and let loose a series of storms like we rarely see in California. Whether it was the rockets, the rain dances, the all-day drinking and shouting, or simply good timing, the festival worked, and everything cooled down just a bit after a couple of weeks of intense, dusty, heat.

Several other events took place during Rocket festival week. Our family and the Cal Poly students got to participate in many of them. There was a fashion show for international couples held in conjunction with the annual beauty pageant. 13 Cal Poly students were able to pair up with some visiting Thai nursing students, and the whole group rented fantastic traditional Thai costumes to parade down the runway. A terrific time was had by all, and if I do say, the Cal Poly/Thai couples stole the show. Anna and Max got some neat clothes out of the deal, too. A parade took place on Thursday, within which a group of students got to perform the traditional rain dance along the parade route. The parade itself was an epic, three-hour long procession of twelve sets (one for each regional village) of giant serpent floats, gongs, dancers, decorated children, rockets, and large groups of very drunk villagers (mostly teenagers) completely covered in mud. The mud is from the tradition of throwing a rocket launching villager into the muck if their rocket does not launch with sufficient height or glory. It was approximately 100 degrees Fahrenheit and desperately humid during the parade. We only lasted for 6 village sets before rushing back to our air-conditioned bus. The Cal Poly students also kept busy during the week by traveling back and forth to school in Nong Khai each day from their homestays in the country, working on individual projects at the Center for Vocational Building Technology (CVBT) with local Cal Poly alum and do-gooder Geoffrey Wheeler, and turning into regular patrons at the river bars and city nightclub (called Bar-Nana but pronounced Bah-nana). Dan did his best to help with logistics and coordination and moral support for all of these activities. On Sunday, our whole family stayed together and rested, doing just about nothing.