Cambodia Water Festival - Bun Om Tuk
Trip Start
Oct 16, 2007
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19
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Trip End
May 09, 2008
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Friday, November 23, 2007
One of the reasons why we came to Phnom Penh was for the annual Water Festival.
All we knew before coming to Cambodia is that there's supposed to be lots of people and lots of cool boat races.
It was more chaotic than we thought -- The population of the city more than doubles during the festival as all the locals stream into the city. We heard most of the ex-pats living in the city flee to the beaches during this time to avoid the chaos during the festival. Some restaurants and shops close during the festival too.
We were coming back from our visit to the Killing Fields in our tuk-tuk and at the city border we were stopped at a police roadblock. The police said we couldn't continue down the road and we had to find another way to get into the city! It was confusing as they seemed to be letting some people through and some not, without any particular pattern. Our driver was also confused and frustrated. So our driver decided to pull back from the road block and 10 minutes later sneak back in line. The police seemed quite furious this time. At this moment we were wondering if we should pay the police guy a buck to to let us in (something that we heard works in this town) but our driver already turned around and started complaining or swearing in Khmer. Lots of people were motioning him to go down some narrow dirt alley, and down we went. The alley was pretty bumpy and very dusty -- barely one tuk-tuk could fit through.
View from the top of FCC
We passed lots of sad looking shacks, some mom & pop shops, and some rich mansions all mixed together. We did manage to get back to the city in probably double the amount of time it normally takes. The police also closed off many of the streets, so our tuk-tuk driver couldn't take us all the way to our destination in the city. We decided to walk to the waterfront. There was a nicely decorated tent where we figured the King and other important people sat, with the best views. Next to it we saw a sign "Foreigners Free here", so we rushed to that area. If you're a foreigner, you can sit in another comfy tent next to the King's tent to also get great views of the festival. Coincidentally, we got there just in time for the lighting of the boats and fireworks. The boats were elaborately illuminated with lights. Check out the pics and also we uploaded a short video here. We thought this was the opening ceremony but the boats and fireworks show went on all 3 days!
We got to see some of the boat races during the day. The boats were quite long. On one count, it seemed that the boats held 80 people. Here's another short video of the boat races.
All in all a fantastic festival!
