Water Festival (15th to 17th November 2005)

Last week (week of 13th to 19th Nov) was urguably my worst week ever in Cambodia....

Cambodia celebrated its annual Water Festival. The 3 day event is the most extravagant and exuberant festival in the Khmer calendar. It's held in great reverance becos it's to celebrate the reversal of fertile waters of the Tonle Sap river & the beginning of the fishing season. Also to give thanks for the previous year’s yield & to pray for following year’s harvest. Ppl come for the boat races and the huge carnivals at the Phnom Penh riverside.

Some angmohs liken it to Cambodia’s version of Mardi Gras. For me, it's a mega crazy Pasar Malam (night market).

Population of Phnom Penh easily doubles over this 3 day event. 2.5 million people from all walks of life & from all over the country come to Phnom Penh to form this MEGA MOSH PIT on the roads. Crazy Cambos!

Our company had 4 booths at the riverside selling our products. I had to be there to supervise. The weather was freaking hot. I drank gallons of water and yet I didn't got to take a piss once! I just sweated the water out!

The week was horrible not becos of the water festival...altho the heat did play a part....but the week was crap becos of Fat Motormouth Fucker (FMF).

Being a Singaporean new to Cambodia, he is totally new to the lack of urgency & organisation shown by our staff.....something which I have gotten used to and resigned myself to. In my first few months in Cambodia, I tried hard to instill in them a better work ethic etc.. In some aspects I have succeeded but on the whole, I found that the ppl here are highly resistant to change. I learnt that to expect changes overnite is too much to ask. And to change the Cambodian ppl to Singaporean way of life & work is not exactly something for the better....highly stressed up, materialistic, pampered Singaporeans? Haha....Maybe Singaporeans should take it easy and relak one korner like the Cambos.

FMF threw tantrums throughout the whole water festival. By the 2nd day, I had 2 staff resigning becos FMF scolded them. FMF had the nerve to come complaining to me about them when he was the cause of their resignation! I had to rework & reallocate my staff to accomodate the manpower shortage. I had to do some major damage-control and calm down the staff...

Anyways, checkout the pics below:


Morning & Afternoon crowds - manageable....


Morning & Afternoon crowds at my booths


When a rainbow is appears, the little kids come out & play...


Kids going crazy over balloons!!!


The Phnom Penh riverside is littered with dirty kids in rags, running around with big gunny sacks. The locals call these kids "ehh-chais". They are really poor, they dun goto school and they scrunge around looking for bottles, recycleable containers etc. - basically things that they can re-sell to earn some money; to buy probably their only meal of the day... I made sure all the empty water bottles were given to any "ehh-chais" hanging around...


Egg boys - These 2 boys were hanging around behind my booth. The mom (or elder sister) bought them a hard-boiled duck egg to share. The one in white started to peel the egg and feeding the younger kid. The look of contentment on their faces reminded me of simpler times, when I was just a boy without a care in the world...


FIREWORKS!!!


This is the crowd on the last day.
It was so congested that ppl started to get nervy and pushing each other to break free. Ppl got very rowdy.

A woman almost got killed when she fainted in front of our stall and almost got crushed by the crowd. We had to pull her up onto our booth and administer some first aid to revive her. Then we started pulling ppl into our booth as things got really desperate.

The Cambodian Water Festival is quite an experience... I happen to know alot of expats leave the country during this period but I would definitely recommend any 1st time visitors to Cambodia to maybe include this event into their travelling plans.