FÊTE DES EAUX

The festival of the withdrawal of the waters is the biggest traditional festival of Cambodia. Usually set at the full moon of Kattik (November), it marks the end of the annual flood, the reversal of the Tonle Sap's current and the ripening of the crops. According to tradition, it corresponds to the return of the fertilizing Nâga to the riverbed, a poetic translation of the beneficial influence of the flood. The king moves to his floating house anchored in front of the royal palace and must remain there for three days. Every afternoon, the races of decorated dugouts constitute a spectacle extremely appreciated by the population of the capital. The last day of the ceremony is marked by the severing of the leather strap which bars the river. A Brahmin, sword in hand, mounted at the front of a dugout canoe driven by seven men, slowly approaches this symbolic hindrance that holds back the waters, hesitates for a long time, then cuts it off with a wide gesture. It is then that the whole of the dugouts rushes and passes in front of the royal house in the middle of cries and songs, while immense and round, the moon goes up with the horizon. The apotheosis of each of these days is the festival of the floating games. A boat erected as an altar stops in front of the king, who lights some of the hundreds of candles that it carries, imitated at once by the members of the royal family, the dignitaries of the kingdom and the guests of honor. It is then the parade of junks and boats topped with allegories and illuminated decorative motifs.