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King Sihomani gets a three-day holiday for is birthday. It seems a bit much but Cambodia is known for its excessive number of public holidays (24 vs 11 in the United States). Today is the second day of this holiday with one more to go, and then it’s back to work on Wednesday.
An earlier posting looked at how Cambodian people avoid the sun on their heads. This post today looks at how they avoid the sun on their arms. Click here to see some of their techniques.
The third day of the new year traditionally is focused on honoring statues of Buddha but there was not much sign of that in Phnom Penh. Maybe it was taking place in the provinces. Probably later tonight we will see real traffic jams as the hundreds of thousands of people start returning to the city.
This new year celebration is not like most through the years because two of the three days fall on a weekend. In the past the government would give an extra day for that but they have abolished that practice. One aspect that is the same as previous years is the much emptied city. Here are some pictures of Phnom Penh today.
It’s not only the local Cambodians who have abandoned Phnom Penh. Many, many of the expatriates here have followed the locals on to the highways for a long holiday weekend for the Khmer New Year. Today, the first day of the new year, we saw attendance at our Saturday evening mass down a great deal.
The official new year celebration starts tomorrow but many (most?) people have already taken off from work and the city has largely emptied out. Still there was plenty to do for the people who stayed behind. Click here to see some of the new year’s eve scenes.
April13-15 is the official Khmer New Year but the deaf people will go to their home provinces then so there was a new year celebration today at the Deaf Development Programme office in Phnom Penh. Click here to see the activities.
Yesterday it was 93ºF in Phnom Penh, I believe, and this young woman was waiting at the light beside me. Notice the sweatshirt with the hood up under the helmet, the gloves, even socks with her sandals. And all the other women are like her, all bundled up to avoid the sun and dark skin.
Cambodia is a mix of cultures in some ways. Look at this street sign. First of all, the modern-type of highway sign for controlled access roads contrasts mightily with the chaos of Phnom Penh streets with their thousands of motorbikes, cars, food carts, bicycles, and pedestrians, each going his own way and doing his own thing. Then there is a mixture of languages on the sign: Khmer script and English language script. And beyond the Charles de Gaulle Blvd name, there is the French spelling of “Tchecoslovaquie” for Czechoslovakia. And then there is the KFC culture imposed over everything else. The Kingdom of Wonder….
Mobile noise is a nuisance but at least it moves on, out of range. Some established stores also set up speakers at the front of the store, but again it’s only a short-term irritation because usually the people are moving past the stores. Click here to see some examples of the stores with speakers.