It must be a full moon in Hoi An
Sometimes the best laid plans for travel fall apart. Dates don’t work out. Connections can’t be made. Attractions are closed.
And other times, with absolutely no advance planning, things just fall into place.
When I was organizing our last trip to Vietnam, I had all the destinations locked in. Reservations were made at hotels. Flights were booked. And only then, after I had done all that, did I check to see if our stay in Hoi An would coincide with a Full Moon Lantern Festival. Well, whaddaya know? It did.
First up, adjust your expectations if you’re thinking along the lines of Thailand full moon parties. Not at all the same thing.
In Hoi An, the Full Moon Festival is about showcasing the town’s heritage and culture. Full Moon Festivals are held on the 14th day of every lunar month – which gives visitors at least 12 opportunities each year (and occasionally 13) to catch a Full Moon Festival. It’s worth checking with a local source as to the actual date in a particular month, as I’ve found that dates on websites can vary.
On the festival night, the old town part of Hoi An is closed to all motorised vehicles at 6pm, regular electric street lighting is turned off, and the lanterns are lit.
And when I say lanterns….I mean, LANTERNS! Everywhere. All sizes, colours, shapes and styles.
The Full Moon Festival is a time for locals to honour their ancestors. Altars bedecked with flowers, fruit, food, candles and incense are set up at the front of many of the shops and homes. In exchange for this worship, ancestors will hopefully bestow good fortune on their families.
Alongside the Thu Bon river are many sellers of floating paper lanterns. These lanterns are folded from coloured paper, and have a small candle in a square of polystyrene in the base. Competition for sales are fierce, so we negotiated hard to buy lanterns, plus the services of two tiny, but skilled women to row us out in boats onto the river to float our lanterns downstream.
It was a stunningly beautiful, but also somewhat nervy experience. 100 (combustible) paper lanterns to be lit, in a (combustible) wooden boat, out in the darkness of the river. Plus, every time we went under one of the footbridges crossing the river, we had to put our heads between our knees to avoid being hit.
Once released, the lanterns are said to bring happiness and luck. We must be rolling in the joy and good fortune, as most of the lanterns floating on the river that night were from our group.
It’s all very pretty, but I did worry about the environmental impact of all those candles and polystyrene being released onto the river. It seemed, however, that the current was washing them ashore, where they ended up stranded at the end of the night on the riverside streets, and could be swept up.
Meanwhile in the local squares of Hoi An, crowds gather to take part in traditional folk games. We watched a spirited game of Bai Choi which looked to be a form of musical bingo. If you’ve ever seen the episode of the TV series ‘How I Met Your Mother’ where Barney takes part in a Chinese gambling game at Atlantic City…well, this game (to uninitiated bystanders like us) made about as much sense.
Further along the street, there was another raucous game underway (photo above) . It was like a version of piñata, where a small terracotta pot is suspended from a rope about 10 steps in front of the contestant who, after paying the entry fee, is blindfolded and given a wooden stick. It looked like so much fun, we all had to have a go.
The crowd yells instructions as you walk towards the hanging pot. Undermining these instructions, the MC speaks through a microphone, and cymbals crash, masking the other voices. Once you think you’re within reach of the pot, you have one chance to smash it with the wooden stick. It’s total chaos and very funny as people swing wildly into thin air. Britannia‘s brother was the only one in our group successful in smashing a pot, for which he received a prize of a silk purse.
A more sedate sight was the old men in traditional dress, playing a Vietnamese form of chess by candlelight.
Around 10pm, the streets are opened up to motorbikes again, the lights go on, and all that remains of the floating lanterns is the washed up debris on the riverside streets.
