Every kid's dream

Sunday in Yasothon was the big day of the Rocket Festival. We figured they'd shoot off a few big rockets and call it a show, but for five hours they launched rocket after rocket. The rockets had some kind of explosive packed into PCV pipe and who knows what else. Most were smaller, about four feet long, but some were ten feet long or so. They didn't look too fancy but they had extraordinary force and launched thousands of feet up into the sky. The good ones popped a parachute and floated back down but most just landed a couple kilometers away in somebody's field. The big shot of the day was a huge rocket, a good 15 feet long. It looked like Cape Canaveral as it lit up and started off the launch ramp. But soon thereafter the rocket turned over and went horizontal, shooting off across the landscape like a cruise missile. A few kilometers away it went over the horizon and landed hard. The next day we saw in the paper that it hit a mango tree and exploded, pretty close to some houses. So close to a disaster.