Naysayers worried and whinged in the lead-up to this year’s Water Festival. My favourite gaudy vested anchorman finger-wagged a lot about it. A poor show this year: apparently just 248 boats, instead of the usual 800. Given the festival’s recent tragic history, mums in the provinces naturally fretted about their kids in the big smoke. The TV got grannies from Prey Veng to Battambang predicting something supernaturally shady with the whole shebang. There was carping down the Panda Mart about the loony street closures and which crooked rozzer was selling VIP access to locals who were entitled to pass for free.
Most vocal, though, were the rheum-eyed jades, those been-there-done-that couldabeens who shuffle the seedy expat path between babytalking their lap-sat bodega girls down 51 in broad daylight and late-night, pompous tit-for-tat grammar scuffles on their bitter ‘Cambodia is Crap’ Facebook pages. The races may be over, but those gouty dotards are still bitching about the lack of shady daydrinking spots on the riverfront, and how that provincial plastic-belt salesman cheated them out of half a pent. You’d think they would’ve ironed their cleanest singlet and fucked off on the apparently extortionate $8 bus to Snooky or the sexpat express to Pattaya for the duration. Or forever, even. Anything to get away from the crowds of everyday out-of-town Cambodians (or ‘peasants’, as they’re called on the official Tourism website) spending hard-earned cash, overcoming natural trepidation and enduring a 14-hour chickentaxi sauna to come root for their home-grown boats hauling arse.
And, shiver me timbers, didn’t they?! I’ve enjoyed my fair share of sweaty slappy man comps in which vigorous teams of colour-coded beefcake achieve something thrilling together, but I didn’t expect to see that kind of manly action – and with far more august historic pedigree – this past Bon Om Touk. ‘Cos let’s get real, Khmer fellers. Though props for handcrafting a space-visible religious wonderment, you’ve snoozed on your laurels since 1150AD. Drinking coffee en masse at every available street corner and screaming at John Cena fake-beating the crap out of an actor in lycra tights and a bedazzled cod piece don’t count. It’s yelling at American TV with a bunch of similarly skiving mates. An active celebration of the majestic tradition and awe-inspiring cultural muscle that created a once great empire it certainly ain’t.
Every year since I’ve lived in CharmingVille I admit I’ve upped sticks and headed out to somewhere beachy or chill, but this time me and The Hubster decided to stay. I didn’t know what to expect except maybe a beer concert and some kind of half-arsed regatta. So imagine my surprise when, after negotiating the three separate road blocks in the 100 yards between Marital HQ and Riverside, my Lifemate and I met with the spectacle of hundreds of thrusting mariners standing shoulder to shoulder and rowing in perfect unison, club coloured and kroma’d, while clumps of floating lotus and water hyacinth swept by. Delighted citizens thronged the banks and cheered and selfied and snacked. Wiry blokes just off their boats with muddy legs and lip-hung fag ends still had the energy to tomfool with rivals and pose for toothy portraits. Monks shared prehistoric binoculars, ladies in eyewatering jimjams, toesocks and matching hats sold pneumatic bags of squid floss to toddlers half their size, and a wizened codger sporting a pork pie hat and amulet tattoos sat on the parapet swinging his legs and teasing his giggling grandkids. I looked up and saw throngs of smiling tourists watching the races with icy cold beers and cameras from balconies and rooftops along the Quay. Cops of every stripe hogged the shade.
I felt a bit wrong going into the ‘foreigner’s only’ tent, but they had white satin chair covers and headsets translating the live commentary in English. Hubster pretended he was Malaysian. We sat there in relative cool with a great view of the flower-festooned water dragons, some with female crews and apsara coxswains, knifing through the swift, olive Tonle Sap and urged on by their hometowns on both banks. I learned that some had rowed kilometres down various rivers to get here. We motoed across the Japanese Bridge early on Day 2 as the first racers geared up and watched 40 men in yellow T-shirts and red krama climb down the hasty ladders to the mash and trash of sludge below, 80 flip-flops left behind as they pushed off with rousing chants. These dudes meant business. These rice farmers and shop keepers and motodops and fishers. These 21st-century strugglers, stoic, shy, dirt poor. And usually invisible. They outshone the Ministries’ lacy floating light show, and the fireworks, and all the combed-over, white-suited Oknhas and their bejewelled wives. They brought the pomp and swag and vigour of Angkor princes and stirred us pasty city folk, for just three days of the year, and I was so glad to see it. Young guys full of noble piss and vinegar, old ones quietly confident and twinkly, all justifiably proud of a tradition 1,000 years old, and giving everyone who stayed behind a Very Good Show.