The Water Festival is the most festive festival in Cambodia, people from all over the country gather in Phnom Penh to see the boat race, the illuminated boats and the fireworks. The city is filled with people, food stands and live concerts.

Loy Pratip is also known as a fluvial parade. It is held in the evening and features illuminated boats that light up the river. Sampeas Preah Khe refers to when Cambodians salute the full moon and pray for the future harvests.

“Auk Ambok” means a gathering with your family to eat the flattened rice with coconut, banana and then salute to the moon during this ceremony. More about Ambok: At the beginning of the rice harvest, some rice is set aside to be specially prepared and eaten during certain Khmer ceremonies.

The History: Cambodian Water Festival was first celebrated in the 12th century, around the time of Angkorian King Jayavarman VII. The King’s Navy helped usher in the Cambodian fishing season. The festivities made the gods happy and secured good harvests of rice and fish in the upcoming year.

The festival goes for three days and commemorates the end of the country’s rainy season as well as the change in flow of the Tonlé Sap River….

Cambodia
Bon Om Touk has been celebrated in Cambodia since as early as the 13th century, and signifies a celebration of water as an invaluable, life-giving resource: when the lake floods, it becomes a significant source of fish, and the surrounding farmland benefits from an increased surplus of minerals from the lake.

15 days
The ceremony takes 15 days and is a time when Cambodians honor their ancestors up to seven generations back. It is one of the most important holidays in the country. The first 14 days of Pchum Ben are called Dak Ben.

The Water Festival is the New Year’s celebrations that take place in Southeast Asian countries such as Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand as well as Yunnan, China. It is called the ‘Water Festival’ by Westerners because people splash / pour water at one another as part of the cleansing ritual to welcome the new year.

The water festival is a celebration of the rebirth of the country through the monsoon rains, and the colorful boat races a vestige of the former military might of Angkor. Dating back to Angkorian times, today’s Water Festival is a throwback to times past.

Burma’s answer to Thailand’s Songkran, and Cambodia’s Chaul Chnam Thmey, is Thingyan. It’s the annual water festival, which celebrates the coming of the new year with a nationwide display of performances, religious ceremonies and, bucket loads of water.

The Water Festival history goes back to the Angkorean times in the 12th Century AD when the Khmer empire occupied most of the Indochinese Peninsula. During that time, Cambodia had achieved peace and prosperity following the victorious naval battle with the Chams, which took place from 1177 to 1181 AD.

For the people of Cambodia, the Water Festival and Bon Om Touk (The Pirogue Racing Festival) in Phnom Penh is the most magnificent traditional festival. For three days Phnom Penh citizens, foreign tourists and peasants from various provinces gather in the capital to celebrate festival night day. The water festival had background for so long time.

This year’s festival in Phnom Penh is due to attract well over a million spectators from across the country, the region and the world, with the brightly painted boats, megaphones. and luminous T-shirts adding a distinctly modern feel to the historic festivities.

A true water culture, Cambodia’s ancient relationship between the Mekong, the people and the land dates back thousands of years. The famed navies of the Angkorian Kings fought and won many a battle on the waters of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap, and these mighty rivers have given life to some of the greatest Empires in Asia.

In the history, Khmer King always does the battle with enemies by sailing. So he prepares this water festival ceremony every year to choose Champion of sailing battle, as in Bayon Temple, Batteay Chhmar in the Preah Bat Jayvarman VII. We had seen a lot of statues about sailing battle under leading of Jayvarman VII.