It's Festival Time! Pchum Ben.
on So Now It's Cambodia (Cambodia), 06/Oct/2010 14:38, 34 days ago
Tomorrow -Thursday marks the official beginning of one of Cambodia's most important festivals. Apart from it's religious significance, like our Christmas, it's of enormous significance as a family event. So people will be travelling all over Cambodia to reunite with families. It's a national Holiday - VSO office staff have a holiday though they do provide an emergency number! This traditionally also means that bus fares and taxi fares go up - sometimes 100% as well! We travel to Phnom Penh in the middle of this so maybe we will be faced with the same  - maybe even traffic jams!! I've even seen drink drive messages relating to the festival - like we do at Christmas.The son of our landlady has already arrived back home and downstairs by the pool at the big hotel I'm staying in (Prince D'Angkor - Siem Reap) they have set out a big round table by the pool for a special family feast. They seem to be enjoying themselves!On my way over here there was evidence of this already as there were many (mostly women) going along the road wearing white tops carrying little food containers - they wear white to signify death here -so don't go to a wedding in your best white shirt or blouse!! It was obviously not normal day to day activity and the taxi driver confirmed they were taking rice to the pagoda. Whilst it officially starts tomorrow, it seems that, like our Christmas, it has quite a run up as well!I've included a link to some information and photos about Cambodia's festivals if you would like to read more.http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/southeastasia/outreach/resources/cambodiawebunit/culture.html#PchumBenhttp://journals.worldnomads.com/shix/story/23630/Cambodia/PChum-Ben-(Festival-of-the-Dead)http://travel.webshots.com/album/97775733mzjPvO?start=0