We happened to be in Cambodia during the weeklong celebration of the Festival of Lights, the biggest holiday of the year. At night, Siem Reap became a buzzing, hopping town where a huge crowd walked shoulder to shoulder on the main strip, by the river. Live singers blared out some versions of Cambodian pop or hip-hop and all kinds of things were being sizzled on street carts. Here and there, men and women swayed in chaste circle dances, some of them incongruously donning the surgical masks that you periodically see in Southeast Asian cities.
One of the most striking things about the Cambodian population is its youth--only 3% of the country is over 65, partly due to the Pol Pot years and partly because of the baby boom that's followed (the average woman has 4.5 children). The impression is of an modernizing, Western-oriented and optimistic crowd.
During the day, the Festival of Lights was marked by races between giant rowboats holding 40 people each. Yet the culmination of the festivities took place at night, when little elaborate creations symbolizing one's wish--often a house or a boat--with a lit candle in the center were pushed out into the middle of the river (little boys were hired to do this) and left to bob up and down gracefully. For miles, the Tonle Sap River was twinkling with these undulating little lights while the party went on late into the night.
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