Last weekend was one of the biggest events in the Cambodian calendar - the Water Festival, which was held in both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap to mark the end of the rainy season. This entails boat races on the river and a kind of carnival atmosphere with stalls and activities lining the streets and selling, as is typical in Cambodia, anything from clothes and ice-cream to washing up liquid and fried bananas. It basically consists of lots and lots of boats racing as there are teams supplied by local businesses and villages as well as one representative from each province in Cambodia. It is really quite suprising that there are any local people left to run the local shops and restaurants, as literally millions of Cambodians flock to their nearest city for it (about 2 million in Siem Reap and about 5 million in Phnom Penh). Walking along the crowded streets and bridges made us wish for our sleepy city back, as the extra noise and dirt felt odd. On Sunday evening we gathered at our volunteer house to make floating offerings made of banana palm. The trunk of a banana tree was chopped into slices and then we decorated the sides with banana leaves. A candle and three incense sticks were stuck into it and then we decorated the remainder with flowers. We then walked to the riverside, lit our candles and incense, and set them on the water which was really quite beautiful as it was dark by then. They floated down the river and out into the Tonle Sap Lake which is supposed to represent the life that the lake gives the Khmer people.

However for some the weekend was not as amazing as ours, and on Monday morning we awoke to hear that there had been a stampede on a bridge in Phnom Penh the night before. I thought that Siem Reap had been overcrowded but in Phnom Penh it had been even worse and the conditions that the people died in were awful. Over 300 Khmer people died; the largest number of people in any one event since the time of the Khmer Rouge. Thursday was called as a National Day of Mourning and many services were held in pagodas.

This Sunday we decided to cycle to West Baray, an 8km by 2.3km reservoir about a thousand years old. It is supposed to be a 12km cycle each way, but we got hopelessly lost and by the end of the day had in fact cycled over 40km! It is mostly locals that come to the baray and so had a more rural and true feel to it. We lay in shaded hammocks for a few hours, while a couple of brave souls tested the (what I thought was murky) water.