Water Festival

It was the last day of the water festival, which basically consisted of an afternoon's dragon boat racing and some fireworks. There appeared to be a few different varieties of boats, but the main ones had about 75 oarsmen. We watched for a while, before coming back later to watch the final. However by this time the streets were so packed it took us an age and we'd missed the final races. We were inevertheless treated to a firework display and a nuber of barges lit up in various emblems, maps and symbols.

The crowds were scarily large and once away from the river we had to wait 15 mins to move and then quickly retreate4d in the face of a rushing torrent of people, with the usual drunks idiots pushing and making things worse. I kept tripping as I couldn't balance with my hands in my pockets and sure enough as soon as I put my camera and wallet in Kim's bag, within 2 minutes the 1000 Riel in my pocket had gone. Note 1000 Riel is about 13 pence. I managed to burn my leg on a motorbike exhaust while trying to shepard Kim back when she went a different way, but otherwise we escaped unscathed.

Marijn and I then went to Sparks night club later for some dance action. Though to be fair it was quite late when we got there, it seemed to be like the reverse of an English club, with the dancefloor jam-packed and the bars empty. It soon transpired that I was at least 12 years older than the average and would have felt more awkward if it wasn't for the fact that in SE Asia they really can never guess my age . We boogied away for a bit, but evidently something was said by the DJ, becasue the dancefloor completely emptied within about 2 minutes. We got a lift back to the guesthouse on a motorbike, probably would have been a lot more frightening if it hadn't been at the end of a long night.