The omens had been building up for weeks. Everywhere you went in Phnom Penh, the little shops would have colorful plastic water cannons and squirt guns conspicuously displayed for sale out front — and we’d never seen them there before. Clearly, some mischief was afoot. And when it arrived, we got a chance to witness it up close and personal.

At last, we got a real vacation from school, albeit a rather short one, as Khmer New Year (“Chnam Tmei”) got underway. Most of the students and teachers left town to spend time with relatives in the provinces. In fact, most of the people in the entire city left town, leaving most business shuttered, and the streets mostly empty.

Originally we’d planned to use our brief hiatus to visit a few local attractions that we hadn’t seen yet. But we were so worn out, especially since we’d both been battling some kind of bug, that we decided we’d just lay low and rest up. Except for the last two days, when we headed down to Wat Phnom (“hill temple”), the cultural and historical heart of the city.

It was an excellent choice, because it turned out that just about all the people who had not left town had gathered in that area on those two days (and probably the other days as well) for a big New Year’s party. There were music, dancing, food and water — not just water to drink but water to douse other people with.

Cambodian custom around Khmer New Year involves the ritual use of water as a purifying agent. While westerners make New Year’s resolutions to get rid of old unwanted habits, Cambodians symbolically wash them away. But, not content to cleanse themselves, they make sure everyone else gets thoroughly cleansed as well. The whole country has one big water fight during this time.

The neighborhood around Wat Phnom was packed with revelers armed with water cannons, water bowls, and water hoses to soak anyone who crossed their path. There were even fire trucks to spray people and provide refills. There were also a few people running around smearing talcum powder on people’s faces.

The little kids really got into it, of course. But so did the teenagers, the adults and the grandparents. One of the most interesting things we saw was what was clearly a group of young openly gay men joining the festivities. This was encouraging to see, as we’d been under the impression that Cambodian society was rather traditional, and discriminated against the LGBTQ+ community like, say, the USA. In the past Cambodia, being heavily influenced by Buddhist culture, was quite tolerant; but the social order was brutally disrupted by the totalitarian Khmer Rouge regime, and in some ways is still recovering. Today, the government neither marginalizes gays nor offers them any support– it’s all up to the citizens.

It was quite a blast (sometimes literally) to walk among these total strangers, smearing powder on each other’s faces, and soaking each other with water.. Everyone who got the treatment appeared to be quite game — if they hadn’t been, they surely would have known better than to come in the first place. And yes, we ourselves got bombarded with plenty of powder and water. We hardly had a dry stitch by the time it was over.

So now we feel that we’ve been saturated, as it were, with a bit of Cambodian culture. And with as much water as we were hit with, we surely must have had all of our undesirable habits dissolved.

4/15-16/2024