Water Festival!!

Well, it looks like I arrived back at site just in time after my month-long hiatus. Water festival is basically a week long excuse not to work guised as a holiday honoring the moon. At first, I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do with myself for a full week. All the major offices in town are closed, there’s obviously no school, and I was beginning to wonder how I was going to reintegrate back into site after being gone so long without leaning on my automatic status symbol of being the “neak-crew” or teacher. As it turns out, I didn’t have to wonder very long!

I arrived on Saturday, and my host family invited me to go to gut-tun with them on Sunday. During gut-tuns, everyone gets dressed up and heads to the local temple where the monks are praying and collecting money … which is cool, but what’s really fun are the surrounding festivities. It’s like a local fair, except instead of games and funnel cakes, there are rice cakes and young boys wearing Khmai scarf-diapers wrestling each other while a ring of sketchy old men and toddlers cheer for their favorite competitors. Of course, there are also tons of teenagers throwing makeshift water balloons made from sandwich bags and a gridlock of motos near the temple entrance that puts New York City traffic to shame. We waited two hours for our neighbor to pick us up in his car … that was parked 100 yards away. The concept of two lanes was totally lost on the mob, causing out-and-out chaos on the tiny dirt road (which was almost more entertaining to watch than the temple games). The police eventually showed up to direct the cars and motos into a more orderly mess, but the results were minimal. It was awesome.

Colin, Conor and Tyler decided to come visit on Monday so we spent the day wandering around Pursat, eating burgers, and drinking beer by the river. Talk about a perfect afternoon. Not to mention using the guys as an excuse to be a tourist in my own town was a great way to re-acclimate myself with Pursat. We hit all my favorite hot spots: K-Da, Malina Burger, Tela and the Coconut Shade Restaurant within a span of 24 hours. By the end of their visit, it didn’t take much for Colin and Conor to convince me to continue on their road-trip to see a few of the other volunteers up North.

The next day, we met up wit Edna, Bob, Zack and Kevin in Battambang for a repeat performance of what I can only imagine I missed over Halloween. Battambang is one of my favorite places in Cambodia. In fairness, I haven’t seen much of the country yet, but I love how the city manages to remain totally Cambodian (unlike Phnom Penh or Siam Reip that have been taken over by tourism), while still integrating enough Western elements to make it feel like I’m on vacation. It was great to see everyone and catch up on what projects we’re all working on … never mind the latest gossip.

After dinner and our requisite banana splits, we all turned in for the evening. The following morning, Colin, Bob, Edna, Zack and I decided to get up and hike to the top of a small mountain were there were some beautiful temples and the Killing Caves. The Killing Caves are deep natural caverns that the Khmer Rouge used during their reign to dispose of people. They would tie their prisoners’ hands together and push them over to the lip of the caves to the rocks below. Today, you can tour the caves and pay your respects at the nearby monuments honoring the people who died. It’s ironic (as I’m finding much of Cambodia is) that these sobering memories are right next door to some of the most beautiful golden temples I have seen to date.

When we finished touring the caves – you can actually climb all the way down into the very depths of them – we wandered farther up to a Buddhist temple to have a picnic. Little did we know there were monkeys up there! As Bob was wandering around, we saw a huge monkey walking towards him. At first we were excited to see it, until we realized it was eyeing the fruit hanging on Bob’s backpack. Monkeys may be small, but you do not want to stand between one of them and their food! It was almost comic how quickly we scrambled to get out of the way so Bob could throw the fruit on the ground. Our new friend untied the plastic bag like a pro, grabbed the goods and sat happily munching on some dragon fruit as we watched.

We were just beginning to think we were in the clear when tons more monkeys started pouring down the temple walls. I have absolutely no idea where they came from, but within a matter of moments they had entirely taken over our picnic spot. We grabbed what little we could and high-tailed it out of there. No sense spending another month Phnom Penh because of a rabies scare!

We found another place to sit a little farther up where we could enjoy our feast. We had all our favorite Khmai snacks (and some caramel apple dip that is decidedly not Cambodian, but too picnic-worthy to resist). And wow, let me tell you, the view from the top was absolutely breath-taking. You can literally see for miles because Cambodia is so flat so the only things interrupting the patchwork of rice fields are a few renegade palm trees, lakes and village oases.

After our excruciatingly bumpy took took ride back to BB we all took a much needed nap before dinner. As if climbing hundreds of stairs and a steep incline to the top of the mountain wasn’t enough, the roads leading to and from the temples were flooded and bumpy. I think I actually got some air-time during a few of those bumps! And during the highlight of our return trip we all had to crawl out into a mud hole so the boys could push the took took out of a rut. Yeah, sometimes it really is nice to be a girl. As we have come to say: “only in Cambodia!”

The following day, I had tentatively planned on returning South, but I couldn’t resist Deidre’s offer to spend one last night a little over an hour away in the town of Svay where she, Dan, Kelsey and Anthony would be hanging for the night at a VSO volunteer’s house and cooking dinner. Let me tell you, VSOs have the hook up.

I finally made it back to site this afternoon, with plans this week to go swimming with my Spanish friend Anna at a local water hole and visit a near-by temple with some of my co-teachers. It’s great to be back and see everyone – and nothing can beat my host family’s home-coming meal of gnome bun chaw (a white noodle dish with peanut-oil, beef and basil that would blow your mind) and more smiles and giggles than I know what to do with!