Great balls of fire
Hell-fire and brimstone? Elaborate hoax? Rudimentary fireworks display? What is the truth behind the Naga fireballs of northern Thailand? Are they projectiles from a serpent's mouth, as legend says? Blobs of methane gas escaping from decaying vegetation on the Mekong River bed, as scientists speculate? Or are they, as sceptics insist, man-made objects launched to seduce a gullible audience?
It is best not to dwell on the last hypothesis, as Thai television station iTV did a couple of years ago. After claiming that the fireballs - eerie pink globes that flash from beneath the surface of the Mekong (or thereabouts), then disappear a second later - were tracer rounds from AK47s fired by soldiers across the river in Laos, iTV came under siege. Funeral wreaths to curse the station were floated on the Mekong at Nong Khai, the capital of the province where the fireballs are seen every October at full moon, and demands were made that the provincial government sue iTV. The Lao ambassador to Thailand expressed his country's dismay at the claim its citizens had manufactured the fireballs. Bangkok newspapers were full of angry letters and news bulletins covered the furore with lip-smacking enthusiasm. ITV apologised and the five Laotian villagers who had helped the television team were jailed for 12 years for bringing foreigners into the country without permission.
Whatever the truth, the story of the fireballs is irresistible, so on the night of the full moon, I find myself sitting on a metal chair in the village of Phon Phisai, staring at the river with thousands of other spectators.
Fireballs are said to rise from the Mekong, its tributaries and even pools of standing water near the
river, but inconveniently not in Nong Khai city itself, so I had joined a tour bus to the grounds of a temple reputed to be the prime spot for viewing the phenomenon. The bus was plush, with a video system and a toilet, which was a bonus because I had been warned the trip to Phon Phisai, about 40km away, might take three hours because of traffic. In recent years, the fireballs have become a popular drawcard, bringing an estimated 200,000 visitors to Nong Khai district. Most are Thai, but an increasing number are curious foreigners.
Playing on the video was the beautifully filmed Thai movie 15 Kham Duan 11, which is about - surprise - the Naga. It proposes the fireballs are fakes and are the work of Laotian monks who place clay eggs on the riverbed. The eggs rise to the surface and light up, the moral being that a fictitious miracle is better than no miracle if it reinforces belief.
The film is only half finished by the time we reach Phon Phisai and squeeze down a narrow country lane into the temple grounds. A row of chairs on a concrete footpath has been cordoned off for us, while all around, a full-scale festival rages. Entrepreneurs have set up stalls to feed and amuse the masses: trolleys are piled high with barbecued prawns, skewers of chicken, fat little sausages and grilled bananas; pancake-flat pieces of dried squid are arranged like drying laundry on wooden trellises; and trestle tables groan with bottled drinks and toys. A balloon seller is offloading dozens of helium balloons to children, inflating them from a gas bottle that gives off a high-pitched squeal.
The crowd builds steadily as people set up little camps on the steep embankment beside the Mekong with umbrellas and straw matting. Children wander around in their pyjamas as if at a drive-in in the old days. No sober analysis is going to spoil their fun. The happy coalescence of water flow and October temperatures, and the gravitational pull of the full moon, is said to cause the fireballs to rise to the surface, then flare briefly.
An orange-clad figure appears beside me and asks if he can sit down. Andy (apparently he just liked the name) is a monk from a Nong Khai temple. Although he was born in Udon Thani, the biggest city in the northeast, about 75km from Nong Khai, and although he has spent five years at the Mekong-side temple, he has never seen the fireballs. I am about to ask him whether he believes the Naga are spiritual rather than natural or man-made wonders when an official ejects him from the paid area.
Voices and songs carry across the river from the Laotian side, competing with the Thai pop music blaring from speakers in the temple grounds. Occasionally, a commentator breaks into the music with an update.
The previous year's spectacle had been dampened by a monsoon downpour and fierce winds, but this year, the sky is cloudless and the air still, ideal for the experts from a local university who are setting up equipment in an attempt to make scientific sense of the Naga. Most locals seem content to believe the Mekong serpent-king is spitting fireballs into the sky in homage to the returning Buddha.
The carnival honky-tonk is in full cry when, at 6.39pm, three fireballs rise in quick succession from the Laotian side of the river. My initial assumption is that they have soared from Lao territory between the Mekong and the black serration of hills on the horizon, but the Thais are exultant. This is a fraud, I think.
A few minutes later, another couple of fireballs appear from the same thickly forested part of the Lao countryside. I imagine a fireworks crew giggling as they set off rockets between the trees. But to confound my conviction, the fireballs are utterly silent - no gunfire percussion, no rocket fizz. Given how clearly sounds are travelling from the other side of the river, it is puzzling. And they rarely go straight up, flying at varying angles and expiring before they begin to arc back to Earth, unlike any firework I have seen.
Then comes the moment that turns a nascent cynic into a fervent believer. From directly in front of me,
in the middle of the river, two fireballs rise one after the other and fly swiftly over my head, petering out somewhere above the temple. The crowd cheers. I cheer. The Naga live.
I had hoped to watch the rest of 15 Kham Duan 11 on the bus back to Nong Khai, but somebody decides the passengers have seen enough fireballs and screens a Thai-dubbed version of Johnny English instead. I guess I'll never know how the Naga story ends.
