Laotian residents of North Coast ring in their New Year

Men beat drums, and women danced and sang behind a float and adorned a pickup ferrying five orange-robed Buddhist monks. Ringing in the Lao New Year, a monk sprinkled holy water on the crowd Sunday as they made three circles around the parking lot of the Wat Lao Saysettha Buddhist temple on Moorland Avenue.

“(It’s) good luck for the whole year,” Boutsaba Janetvilay said.

Giggling children armed with water guns sprayed the men and women, who were wearing colorful, traditional tube skirts called sinhs.

But the adults cheered; the water is considered a blessing for the new year.

Janetvilay, 49, helped organize the temple’s celebration, now in its 16th year. Members performed traditional dances and held an offering ceremony to Buddha and the monks.

They also washed Buddha statues with perfumed water “to have a clean slate, to start the new year fresh,” said her husband, Nam Ing, 54, of Penngrove.

Some of the women in the parade also washed the hands of the monks and elderly members as a means of asking “for forgiveness,” Janetvilay said.

Unlike his wife, who left Laos when she was 13, Nam Ing is from Cambodia. He said his family celebrated the new year the same way back home.

Afterward, the crowd returned to a vendor area in front of the temple where a local rock band was getting ready to play.

Temple members spent hours before the festival setting up and preparing homemade noodles, sausage and beef jerky.

Money raised from the meals will go to the temple, where about 400 families regularly worship, Janetvilay said.

“It’s very hard to find Laos food,” said her sister, Pinmany Janetvilay. “Some come for the opportunity to taste the food.”

The festival also is an opportunity to showcase their religion and culture to the community and teach their own kids about their roots, the sisters said.

Their teen daughters both performed traditional dances at the festival.

“I hope (people) can see every country is unique and have different ways of showing off their culture,” said Pinmany Janetvilay’s daughter, Pinkeo Phongsa, 15, who couldn’t wait to dive into a bowl of mangoes with sweet rice after her afternoon performance.

The New Year’s festival traditionally is held over three days in mid-April.

However, temple members did not want their celebration to conflict with others in neighboring communities, said Ko Thammasoth, who serves as the temple’s secretary. He said three of the five monks came from a Buddhist temple in Richmond.

Sunday’s estimated crowd of 1,200 was the largest at Wat Lao Saysettha, said Souvanh Pongkhamsing, director of the board.

“We have people from as far as San Jose and Eureka,” he said. “I don’t think we can handle anything bigger.”

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 707-521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @eloisanews.