When buffaloes fight it's the grass that suffers: a proverb from Laos where right-wing and Communist forces have been fighting on and off for nearly 20 years - a conflict as old as that in Vietnam. But a long-drawn-out civil war has not dampened the Lao spirit.

At the annual festivals, such as the great festival of fertility, the public mood is transformed into one of uninhibited delight and people surrender themselves to hours of carefree dance, cheeky playfulness, and slightly drunken tomfoolery. There are moments, too, of pure anarchy: where else would the British Ambassador be beset by a friendly mob intent on removing his shirt?

The climax in the fertility ceremonies is the firing of huge bamboo rockets from the bed of the Mekong river to ask the gods for a season of plenty, for rain and prosperity. Ironically, not far away, missiles of war are sowing death and destruction...