Day 309: Bon Om Touk Water Festival

Bon Om Touk is a festival celebrated in late October or early November and marks the end of the monsoon season. We accidentally timed our travels to be in Phnom Penh during this festival. It was a blast.

Started the day walking around the festival set up and watching the vendors prepare their food stands. There were police, military officers, and security everywhere. Drank some craft Cambodian beer and got out of the heat after walking along the Independence Park.

We moved towards the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. As we made our way back to our hotel, we notice several cars with different international flags parking in a row. There are secret service members and machine guns everywhere. Decent size crowd forming and police holding hands to hold the crowd back; there is also a huge amount of police on scooters at the end of one street and an empty street to a viewing platform.

We realize that someone famous is about to drive through; we decide to get up on a concrete block and pull our phones out. Shit you not, the palace opens up and the KING OF CAMBODIA comes driving through with his police escort and waving to people from his sunroof.

We repeat again, THE KING OF CAMBODIA drives past and we get a solid video and view of him. After googling, we love this guy because apparently he didn’t want to be king and wanted to teach ballet in Europe as a professor. He became a Buddhist monk and is a bachelor with no wife or kids. He gives a lot of charity and enjoys sitting at home reading or listening to classical music.

After a mid-evening break, they start a fireworks show for 2 hours and we walk along the river where light up boats cruise up and down. Venturing back to the festival grounds, we see some water wrestling and beautiful traditional Cambodia dances executed by a dance studio and live band.

Best part is this festival lasts three days, and this was only day number 1.

Spots:
Statue of His Majesty Preah Bat Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk
Royal Palace
Sisowath Riverside ParkRead more