Discover Cambodia’s Water & Moon Festival with Boat Racing

August 04, 2023

The Water Festival or Om Touk Festival is a major National Cambodia festival. It normally celebrates in November or sometimes at the end of October depending on the Khmer calendar. This festival has three ceremonies celebrated together, there’re Boat racing or Bon Om Touk Festival, Bondet Bratib Festival, and Og Ambok & Sampeah Preah Khae or Moon Festival. Cambodian people believed that this festival was celebrated a long time ago since the reign of Jayavarman VII in 1181 till now.

History

The Boat Racing Festival

The Boat Racing Festival or Bon Om Touk is celebrated to pray for the Khmer navy who won in liberating the land from the oppression of Champa invaders.

The Lantern Floating Ceremony or Bondet Bratib

Chanreachea – King of Longvek empire, ordered the commander of the Khmer navy named Ponhea Tat to prepare the army to defend Preah Trapeang Province from the invades of the Vietnam navy. After the fight, Cambodia was the winner. That’s why the king created the Bondet Bratib festival to congratulate this victory and to be grateful to the Goddess Ganga Preh Mae Kongkea. Every year, the king floated the Bratib on the water at night with candlelight and some flower decors.

The Moon Festival or Og Ambok & Sampeah Preah Khae

According to the beliefs of Khmer people, The Buddha used to be born as a rabbit before. The story goes that “Once time, an Inda came down from heaven and changed himself to be a Brahman in front of a rabbit (Rabbit is the Buddha now). In Front of that rabbit, Brahma said «I’ll die if I don’t have food to eat». That time, the rabbit said «I only have meat and blood. If you want to eat, please go and light a fire. I’ll jump into the fire to be your meal».

Right away, Braham didn’t wait and go to light the fire. Whereas that rabbit doesn’t want to wait too long, then jump into the fire immediately. Because of the power of kind and an honest donation from the rabbit, instantly Inda comes and took his both hand to save that rabbit and let it free in the forest. The Inda going back to heaven and painting the rabbit picture on the moon. That’s why we can see the rabbit on the moon until now.

The Three Day Celebration

Officially, the Water Festival is celebrated for three days every year and it has a different ceremony celebration each day.

Day one, in the morning is boat racing by dragon boats. The boat is long (length between 15m-85m) with dragon painting on both sides. It looks like a dragon swimming in the river. One boat can carry up to 15-50 people or more depending on the capacity of those boats. On the evening of this day, each ministry had its large Bratib decors with colorful fireworks at night. People release small Bratib on the water to pray for peace from Preah Mae Kongkea and wish for good luck.

Day two is the Og Ambok & Sampeah Preah Khae or Moon festival. Normally this festival is celebrated at midnight in every family or at the pagoda with lighting the lanterns and Og Ambok. Also after the celebration, they’ll set fire to the candle and turn it down to see the candle dropdown. This is to predict the farming and the rain of the next year.

Day three is the final day of cutting the ribbon to make sure the Water festival is finished.

Nowadays we named this festival “Om Touk Og Ambok & Sampeah Preah Khae festival”. About boat racing, we make it for three days until the festival finishes and the joiner from every province in Cambodia. For the last day, they’ll find the winner which is the faster one. The Om Touk festival attracts a lot of tourists both national and international to visit every year.