Among those demonstrating some of the local crafts, a potter was busily making vases, while this woman painted them with decorative designs.

Quite a percussion section—along with other traditional instruments— backing up the vocalist

All this took place in the lovely setting of Sri Somdet Nagarin Park, home to hundreds of lamduan, and other, trees.

An apparently serious conversation between these two women as they savored some of the free herbal drinks on hand. The women of Isaan seem to delight in wearing multi-patterned outfits.

At one presentation area, elderly women were performing a slow dance as they circled a small shrine honoring a thewada, a guardian spirit of animist origins. As they danced, a microphone was passed from one to another, into which a kind of mournful-sounding song was sung to the accompaniment of a gent playing a kaen, an Isaan instrument made of 16 bamboo tubes (shown and described in the first Lamduan Festivals gallery).

Their faces bear witness to the many hours spent laboring in the rice fields under the sometimes-fierce Isaan sun and to the hardscrabble lives many have lived.

The potter, who turned out one vase after another with much skill and seemingly little effort