Tony Carr: New Years Eve 2007

This New Year's Eve was my first in Cambodia and decided to join some friends who had arranged a boat to cruise the Tonle Sap River which it the main river that runs through Phnom Penh. The boat held about 20-30 people and was planned for a 3 hour tour ("the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed...."). The boat is no Queen Mary and was steered by a fella who looked suspiciously like a bloke who drives a motor-taxi around town. He steered the boat around in circles for the whole time with a steering/rudder type thing that was made out of Lego.

It was actually quite cool for Cambodia at this time of year and more so at night on the river. Most of the poor Khmers were freezing to death and wondering why they were bothering. New Year on the 1st of January is referred to here as International New Years as the country also celebrates Chinese New Year (3 day holiday) in February and Khmer New Year (4 day holiday) in April. The idea of only 1 day for a holiday is absurd to them. As you can tell by the photos below it was really going off on the boat.

Entertainment was provided by a friend of a friend who is an Australian guitar player and singer who did a lot of Johnny Cash. He was very good under the conditions and did a lot of other requested songs. No one really got up and danced, but it didn't stop one brave Khmer girl who took up the role of back-up dancer for the set's duration (I think it was his wife). Most of the revellers were more interested in drinking mainly to keep warm (20 Celsius is a blizzard in Cambodia). Most of the drinking was done around a small table that refused to remain level which confounded most of the locals as to why their drink kept tipping over ("Drink fall down. Pick drink up. Drink fall down again.")

Some noticeable celebrities that appeared at the party were (in order):

* Annie (girlfriend of house mate and fellow teacher Ryan) shown here indicating how many times her drink had fallen off the table.

* Me, Trea (terrified in the "Land of the Giants) and Ryan.

* Simon and Slek (fellow teacher and friend)

Highlight of the night was the firework display at midnight. Phnom Penh does put on a lot of firework displays for the generous amount of holidays the country has. They are always held on the river, so we had a good vantage point on the boat directly under the display. But quantity does not mean quality. The fireworks, in a word, are pissweak. By way of comparison, below is a picture of New Year's celebrations in Sydney on the water as shot by the photographer some kilometres away from the central display:

Below is a photo I took directly underneath the Phnom Penh display at the height of the explosions (the slightly less darker blur in the middle are the fireworks). Given the country's history involving ordinance and exploding things I expected somewhat better.

After the fireworks, one of the passengers aboard had a birthday (1 Jan) and a cake was brought out to celebrate (the lighting of the candles was more of a dazzling display then the previous fireworks). Cambodians love birthday cakes, but not so much for eating. The average Khmer think cakes tastes too sweet, but are perfect for use in hand to hand combat. After the candles and cutting comes the smearing of icing of anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. Below is a photo of the contestant considered the most successful in avoiding the cake standing next the person considered the least successful.