We arrived back in Phnom Penh from Siem Reap and are staying at the Manor House again. We really like it here, at the moment I am sat by the pool with a gin and tonic, with the scent of Frangipani in the air writing this blog, life doesn't get much better than this. But I suppose I am going to have to tell you about the water festival so I shall make a start.
We spent the whole of Saturday at the river side watching the start of the festival. We were fortunate, as there is a pavilion for non-Cambodians which is run by the department of tourism, all very civilised for us. The pavilion is right next the King's Royal Enclosure so, as you can imagine, the view is terrific.
Day one is the day for eliminations to see who goes into the next round, consequently we saw all the boats and all the crews. There were 423 boats with an average of 50 rowers to each boat (that is more than 20,000 rowers!). The boats are dragon boats holding up to about 80, mostly rowers but there is a chap who sits on the front and seems to be the stroke master, but he gets so excited there is no way any of the rowers could keep up with his time. There is also someone in the middle who bails out all the time and is obviously crucial to the success of the whole enterprise. Finally, the chaps at the back are the ones who steer the boat, one or two of them getting so involved in winning that they started rowing too, often resulting in chaos. Keeping 70 or so people rowing at the same pace must be difficult and where some of the crews lost their rhythm the boats were starting to flex in the middle and looked quite unstable. There was an interesting pattern of placement within the boat. As a general rule the first third sat down to row, the second third knelt and the final third stood up. There were a few boats where they all the rowers were standing, facing forward, using oars on what resembled a platform. It all looked most unstable as the boats had a very little clearance above the water. I think these boats must have been in a different strand of the competition but it was difficut to tell.
All the boats were highly decorated, usually with some sort of serpent or dragon. The crews, too, were colour coordinated: there were blues, greens, oranges, reds, pinks, infact all the colours of the rainbow - quite a sight.
The boats raced in pairs and the finishing post was between two canoes, moored to buoys, in which judges sat with a large drum in front of them. Each boat was bonged in on the drums as they crossed the line. All very high tech.
In the evening the King took his place and switched on the illuminated floats which came up the river. These floats depicted his coat of arms and the emblems of all the Ministries. Once these were underway there was an amazing firework display. What an incredible experience.
After all this we had to walk back to the hotel; not easy as the crowds were immense and it was difficult to move. Astonishingly, amongst the pedestrians, shuffling along shoulder to shoulder, were motorcyclists beeping and trying to make their way.
Apparently the population of Phnom Penh is swelled by a million during the time of the festival. I can well believe this, We encountered them all that night, or thought we had.
When I got this far with the blog I saved what I had written, intending to write more today.
You may have heard on the news that there was a dreadful incident at the end of the final day, Monday, when over 300 died and many were injured. Fortunately, we had decided not to go out that evening, as the day before the crowds had been so dense and it did feel unsafe. This sad event has rather taken the joy out of what was an amazing experience, I hope the following
pictures give you a flavour of the event in the first two days.
Liked the pictures - glad to hear you were not involved in the terrible incident.
ReplyDeleteDave & Sue