Khmer New Year

Wednesday the 7th of April.

Next Wednesday is Khmer New Years. This means that today, a week before NYE, the fun, festivities, rites and rituals have to start.

As I rode into the car park at work this morning, I was surprised by a group of men putting up an enormous orange marquee.

I was told that the purpose of these proceedings was to drive out bad spirits so that only good things were left to start the New Year with.

So here I am on only my third day at work, during which I am supposed to be editing a report requesting more funding from DFID – a task which is more like translating a report from pigeon to ‘English for bureaucrats’

While instead I am taking part in several Khmer festivities – much more fun !

First of all we have a couple of hours synchronised chanting by 8 monks, punctuated by the throwing of water and lotus petals over the audience – they must have thought that I had a lot of bad spirits that needed exorcising as I seemed to be the main target for a lot of the water and lotus leaves ?!?!

Then after a short break we some traditional Khmer dancing. Now when I say dancing you should not get the wrong idea, this is not dancing in any form that we would recognise. Traditional Khmer dancing is all done with the wrists and palms. Backs as stiff as a Victorian Major-General, the only other movement a slight swaying occasionally - although this could be due to the heat and possibly malnutrition ? Balancing a bowl of lotus leaves in their left hands, the 3 Khmer dancing girls slowly and gracefully twisted their right wrists and rotated their palms in perfect unison ?! Pausing every few minutes to throw lotus leaves over us – again.

Following on from that we had a small parade. Being led by a singer the small marching band followed with traditional Khmer instruments; drums, long necked lute-type instruments with only one string, 6 foot long poles with jingly bits of metal at the top – that sort of thing.

While the singer was retelling some ancient saga of good versus evil, it was being re-enacted as a small skit by some of the performers. A young lad dressed as a deer was first of all chased by a bowman around the musicians and the audience, he escaped but was then chased by two swordsmen, from whom he also escaped. Barley having a chance to catch his breath he was then set upon by two witches – complete with talons – finally free from all pursuers, he sat at the back of the audience and ate an apple. I am not sure if that last bit was part of the show or just the poor lad having a rest ?


So that is how my day is panning out, I can not wait to see what they have in store for this afternoon!