The rather aptly-named Bun Bang Fai is an annual festival marking the move from dry to wet season. It’s an apt name as a large part of the festival, in Vang Vieng anyway, involves firing rockets into the air to wake the gods up and ask them for plenty of rain for the forthcoming rice-growing season.

This request is somewhat redundant right now as it’s not stopped raining in around 20 hours, but that doesn’t stop the fun. You know how your parents always told you now to play with fireworks? Well, these guys build their own. And I swear some of them are the size of ICBMs. One by one over two days, the rockets are carried up to a launching area outside of the town with great accompanying ceremony. A crowd of around ten people will surround the rocket, drums are banged, songs are sung and they will march up the main street to the Laos version of Kennedy Space Center.

There a competition is held and it’s one day you don’t go walking near the mountains. The challenge is to get your home-made high-explosive device to fly further than your neighbour’s. Scores of these things are let loose simultaneously and the skies darken like that arrow scene from 300 only with slightly fewer deaths resulting. Usually.

As I type up this section, a crowd from a nearby shop have just trudged past as has a bunch of teenagers with what looks like the world’s biggest rocket-on-a-stick. Where on earth they’re going to get a 25-foot tall milk bottle to launch it from, I don’t know.

*later that day*

OK, all festivals should require alcohol and high explosives in equal measure. Also, the entire world should take on the hospitality and generosity of the Laos, Vietnamese, Thai etc people. Yet again I found myself caught up with a bunch of locals heading off to celebrate something special to them. This has happened so many times in Asia (and Oz, and NZ, and …) that I have lost count.

We got a “lift” in one of the floats carrying a highly-decorated rocket. As payment we had to drink beer. Bugger, what a shame. We ended up doing a huge circuit around the town before being driven over to the river where the rocket launchings were taking place.

Guy Fawkes would have been embarrassed at this display of gunpowder-related weaponry. Hell, I think this is where Saddam Hussein “hid” the WMDs that the US couldn’t find. There was certainly enough firepower floating around the waterline here.

The rocket firings were more than impressive, even the ones that didn’t make it off the launch towers. Huge explosions of white smoke as ten people sat around the exhaust with their big signs saying who had made them. Mad. All of them. Like most SE Asians. And in such a great way!

Anyone who can spend a day getting drunk and launching plastic tubes into orbit (or into China depending on what angle the platform is at) is OK by me. Best of all, no month-long run-up where kids throw them at each other, no clampdowns, no need for “organised” displays… and no injuries. High explosives can be fun – if you’re country isn’t full of morons who don’t know how to handle them.

A group of us had arranged to go tubing this afternoon, but late in the evening Nick (who runs the hostel) told us that the best time to start is morning as you can spend the whole day doing it. Instead, some of the girls went while Jo, Heather and I loafed around watching telly and catching up on emails. I’ll let you guess which one of us was online all day.

Eventually, we got off our collective backsides and hired mountain bikes for a little exploration of the surrounding area. For a whacking $2 apiece, we headed off in a random directions until we saw a small sign saving “cave”. Cool. Off we cycled.

After crossing fields, seeing splendid views, being stared at by buffalo/bison/big cow-ish things with scary horns, trusting our lives to rickety bamboo bridges and waving “sabadii” to small children we finally made it to the “cave”.

Someone had stolen it.

At least that’s how it appeared. There was a sign warning “STOP one people 10,000k”, a little seat where someone collecting money might sit, and a total lack of cave. We did explore a bit, but we just couldn’t find anything cavelike. A well, a shallow grave for a midget (empty) and some empty beer bottles but no cave. Maybe the guy packs it up and takes it home when he goes for the night.

We gave it our best, then mounted up and pushed back towards the main road and a guest house we’d spotted for a drink. While we sat and chewed the fat, the threatening rain clouds stopped threatening and instead opened. Heavily. We waited an hour and the rain only lessened slightly so we gave up and continued our ride in it.

To the edges of the town to a Shell station that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Iraq. Through the old air strip which is now used like a semi-road. Past a temple which looked half-completed and had market stalls and a small child’s train ride inside. And then we dropped the bikes off. We got about three hours for a whole pound and it’s only a shame that the weather stopped us having more fun.

The rain didn’t stop all night. We stayed in and watched bad films, ate full English’s for dinner (Jo’s second in a day – tut tut) and battered balls around on the pool table. Nice and relaxing, pretty much what Vang Vieng is famous for.