Strange Trip

Once, back at the beginning, Songrans had started the Carnival at midnight and ended it an hour later at one minute past. At least, it was reasonable to suppose they had, but, in truth, it had been such a long time ago, it was an article of faith rather than fact. Nowadays, Midnight Carnival began when the sun went down and ended when it came up again. It had been wryly suggested by many more than one Songran that it ought to be renamed "All Night Carnival," but somehow it never was. It made for convenient fiction on the Day of Kosal that all licentiousness had taken place in a single, short, non-existent hour, and so it remained as it was.

What it was depended on who did the describing. It might be wild twists of fortune at games of chance tended by sloe-eyed men and women in brilliant costume. Or it might be fine rice wine sampled from one end of the street to the next until the world spun like Samnang's wheel. For lovers of the Youngest, it might be greasepaint and cartwheels or blindfold-tag in a crowd or blowing soap bubbles at passersby. Chanda's devotees spent the night in sexual revels or romantic trysts under firework strewn skies, while enterprising followers of Vanna might find selling candy or trinkets or operating currency exchange more to their delight.

As soon as the sun set, buildings vomited forth a brightly festooned sea of humanity lit by colored silk or paper lanterns. The night smelled of sweetened puffed rice, rich and salty fish dumplings, spicy chili-fried insects. Turn a corner and chocolate, sugar, cinnamon, gave way to sweat, smoke, wine and sex. By midnight, the Carnival resembled nothing so much as a bejeweled caterpillar comprised of myriad masked and painted faces, in wild distortions of ecstasy, agony, and joy.