The festival contains some of my most favorable memories, from the very photo that showed of me sitting on gramps neck just to see what’s going on to me staring at gramps shouting at the racers after a loss.
I also feel glad to know that the festival is actually a healing time for those hard working farmers. I feel good when the city is all lit up with colorful strings of lights and all the festive decorations. I feel a whole lot amount of satisfaction.
There’s a slogan alongside the official name of the festival, Bon Om Touk: Ak Ambok, Sampeah Preah Khae, Bandaet Pratip.
Bon Om Touk basically means The Water Festival, and there is one thing to it which took me by surprise, it is that The Water Festival is celebrated whenever a reversal of the flow of the Tonle Sap River happens, which is always around the third week of November ever since.
Ak Ambok, Ak is to pound on something, and Ambok is according to me, a weird-looking rice with a better smell to it. Overall, it means to pound on The Rice, and of all the three days of the festival, you can literally find it everywhere; I like to have it with our traditional palm sugar syrup. As how it is mentioned, we now know that the Ambok dish represents the festival.
Sampeah Preah Khae, this whole phrase means to salute the moon. People gather at pagodas at midnight to offer the Ambok dish to the moon as a prayer and as a salutation, it’s when we have late night snacks with Gods.
Bandaet Pratip, these are those small boats covered with many lightings, each displays either a government ministry or a state institution. Scheduled at 7pm, they are taken to the water on the last day of the festival.
I normally attend all these events, I have not missed any except the 2010 Major Stampede. May God bless those who went away, it should not have happened and it should never ever happen again.
Boat racing is the main event of the festival, people from all the provinces from across the country gather here to see if their respective boats get some KO-s or get KO-ed, the pride is on the line. But here comes the Royal Boat Racers, I call it “The Unbeatable”, not because it the king’s so you mustn’t beat them, but it’s because they really are the real deal. They are loud, tough, and athletic, they do win most of the games every year, and the reason why I like them is because every game they raced, it’s always an epic thriller, a big big big one; killer competitive, that’s how I like it.
Cambodia isn’t that big, but that doesn’t mean we got little amount of boats, how do I know that? Well, my grandpa works for one of the ministries here, so we get the list of all the races that will be held, and I see more than 200. Gramps owns several of them as well, he enjoys it as once-a-year kind of hobby and he pretty much is very sucked in by the race. He shouts and smiles and gets mad and jumps and punches people during the three days of the race, as much as he loves, I do too. We prefer getting into the crowd rather than having a VIP seat near the King and drinking tea and watching everything through the binoculars; we stand by the stairs at the river bank.
I’m going to get into details about the boats and the event itself, in bits, since I have been there with gramps, I can say that I know about it slightly more than my friends.
The event lasts for three days back to back, and it starts with the King taking his sit, his throne. National Anthem is played, then the King gets greetings from everyone, and the Prime Minister’s speech.
More than 250 races are being held, each with unique purposes and decorations and names, either trying to keep their pride safe or redeem it back from last year’s lost.
The Decoration, designs are all religiously based, means that each boat are from different areas of the country, and most of them have different Gods to worship. As for my gramps’ boat, it is painted in black with flowers and unique ancient signs I do not know of, why black? because the God we worship in our hometown in called “The Black God”, most Cambodians are buddhist, we do worship Buddha who is the head of Buddhism, but most of us would also worship the locals Gods depending on the area we live in.
The Name, names normally are decided according to this formula,
“The Holy Of or The Mighty”+Your Name+The God’s Name,
so example, if I’ll have my own boat, then it’ll be, “The Holy Of Hongyy and The Black God”.
The Icebreakers, they are the ones who makes boat racing a bit more intense and calm at the same time. Either a female or male, either dressed as an Apsara or a certain God or just the captain himself, they normally stand or sit on the tip of the head of the boat, shouting and leading and sometimes even plays drum and sometimes holding a megaphone, making the racers’ hearts race as well as their bodies.
Placements and Positions, starting from the beginning comes the The Icebreakers or the captains, then the rowers (minimum of 6 and maximum of 75 rowers, depending on the boat sizes and regulations), and there’s a guy standing at the end of the boat; rowing till the end.
Betting, as I’ve now understood the purpose of it and how it’s done, I can say that it was involved in the event, what are the regulations? the rules are that it is only legal for the owner of each boat, and it will only happen if both sides agree to take on the bet; public betting is illegal, but I think it is done most of the time.
At the end, it’s a festival and we, the people deserve the fun and joy in any scale we wish to.
Sadly, due to the shallowness of water Tonle Sap River has given us this year, the government couldn’t risk the chance, so it was cancelled.
Hopefully, it will be grand next year.
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