Saturday night pagodas and candlelight.

Saturday night KL and I went across the river for two celebrations: a world-wide festival and to celebrate SL + KL’s belated birthdays. It started off with an impromptu visit to the Pagoda to leave our bikes in a safe place since the streets were “walk only” that night.

We ended up having tea with the nuns-in-training and doing a sort of half charade conversation with a little part Vietnamese part English thrown in. Somehow we understood each other and then we laughed and played with our sweet 5 year old Hien (http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-446175.html) . After tea, we headed down to the riverside, while we suspect the nuns prayed over our bikes and kept them safe for us.

At 8 PM, as we sat and had a little fresh beer & mojitos, the city slowly went dark to celebrate Earth Hour. Slowly you could see the skyline turn black, and all that was left were lanterns and candles beginning to appear. This is a day of worldwide participation that happens every year. It was perfect. The lanterns were lit, torches were put up in trees and little by little the river was filled with flower shaped paper lanterns being floated down by the children. Then all of a sudden on both sides of the river at the same time, streams and stream of children lined up two by two, started singing as they walked alongside the river with their lanterns in hand. And of course the quiet of hum of their sweet songs quickly morphed into laughing and skipping and all round fun. What was striking was the quiet though. The atmosphere was dreamy and the light streaked through the darkness until all you could see were hundreds of glowing faces as they marched closer and closer. It’s cool here with a breeze, and with the lights off it just felt calm. No motorbikes, no bicycles, no lights, only walking and laughing and candlelight.

Just one hour a year. That’s not too much to ask. Check out the videos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9891000@N02/4484457620/in/set-72157623630715879/. I love the quiet hum of the crowd. You’d never believe there were thousands and thousands of people there.