Tradition

Bon Om Touk

បុណ្យអុំទូក

The Water Festival (បុណ្យអុំទូក, Bon Om Touk) is Cambodia's three-day festival of boat races, lanterns and moon worship at the end of the rainy season.[1][2][3] It is held at the full moon of the month of Kadeuk, usually in November, when the Tonlé Sap River changes the direction of its flow.[3][2][4]

Practice

A crowd with umbrellas on a riverbank watching a long boat pass.
Crowds on the riverbank watching a boat race, Phnom Penh, 2023. Photo: Codas, CC BY-SA 4.0

The festival's formal name lists its four parts: the royal boat races, the floating of lanterns, the eating of ambok and the worship of the moon.[1]

The Royal Boat Race opens the first day. Crews of about 40 to 80 paddlers drive long, decorated boats in time to the drum; many boats carry a naga-headed prow and painted eyes, with a dancer at the bow.[5][3] Provinces, military units, government ministries and other institutions send their own boats and crews.[5][3] In some places the boats are blessed before they enter the water, with prayers, dancing and the sprinkling of holy water.[6]

That evening the Bondet Bratib ceremony sets large illuminated boats and lanterns on the water. In 2019, illuminated boats representing the Royal Palace, Parliament, the government and the ministries floated on the river at night, after the King lit a victory flame.[7][2] The festival also brings fireworks and concerts.[3]

The second night brings Og Ambok and the moon ceremony, held soon after midnight, when flattened rice is eaten with bananas and coconut juice.[5][3] In one Og Ambok custom, young men and women are paired in lines and feed each other as much ambok, banana and coconut as they can eat.[8] In the older royal rite, a palace Brahman (bakou) cut a sacred cord stretched across the river on the last day.[1][4] The ethnologist Ang Choulean reads it as a sign for the waters to flow back to the sea.[1]

Meaning and significance

Brightly lit floats glowing on dark water in front of a lit building.
Illuminated floats on the river at night during the Water Festival, Phnom Penh, 2023. Photo: Codas, CC BY-SA 4.0

In a popular view recorded by Adhémard Leclère in 1904, the festival thanks the goddesses of the earth and the waters, Preah Thorni and Kongka, for their gifts and asks pardon for fouling the waters; learned Cambodians told him it keeps the evil spirits of the earth and the waters from laying waste the kingdom.[4] It honors the land and water that bring good harvests and plentiful fish.[9] Sampeah Preah Khae, the salute to the moon, gives thanks for the harvest and asks for a prosperous year.[2] The moon ceremony also recalls the Buddhist story of a bodhisattva rabbit, whose image is believed to remain on the face of the moon.[10] The ambok itself is rice fried in the husk, pounded flat and roasted with banana and coconut.[2]

History

Tradition ties the boat races to the reign of Jayavarman VII, whose Khmer navy is remembered for a victory over Champa on the Tonlé Sap.[5][3] The ethnologist Ang Choulean dates the royal festival in Phnom Penh to the reign of King Norodom (1860 to 1904), after the capital moved from Oudong, and does not accept a link to ancient naval battles.[1]

Louis Delaporte, who traveled in Cambodia from 1866 to 1868, mentioned the festival in passing, and Émile Gsell photographed a long boat in the same years. In 1884 a French admiral described the races and the floating lights in Phnom Penh, and in the early 1900s the regattas near the Royal Palace drew European spectators.[11][4] The Phnom Penh celebration returned after the Second World War, in 1945, and again in 1953, after Cambodia's independence from France, and it grew in the 1960s.[5][3] It was suspended during the Cambodian Civil War, and in later years disasters, political events, low water and the COVID-19 pandemic have interrupted it again.[5][3]

Variations

The festival centers on Phnom Penh, where the races run along the riverfront of the Tonlé Sap and the Mekong, but towns across Cambodia hold celebrations at the same time. Boat designs, crews, lantern displays and the ceremonies around them vary from place to place.[5][3]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Cambodianess, Ky Soklim, Exploring the Roots of the Water Festival (November 4, 2025)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 ach.or.kr newsletter, Bon Om Touk
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 Cambodia Kingdom, Water Festival
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Adhémard Leclère, La fête des eaux à Phnom-Penh, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, vol. IV (1904; in French)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Wikipedia, Bon Om Touk
  6. ↑ Globaltimoto, Bon Om Touk (December 2021)
  7. ↑ Press and Quick Reaction Unit, Office of the Council of Ministers, C. Nika, Water Festival 2019 Starts (November 10, 2019)
  8. ↑ The Cambodia Daily, Ouch Sony, Clergy Strives to Keep Festival Traditions Alive (November 8, 2014)
  9. ↑ CambodgeMag, Christophe Gargiulo, Cambodia & Tradition: About the Water Festival - Bon Om Teuk (November 8, 2024)
  10. ↑ Compass, Bon Om Touk (Royal Water Festival) celebration (November 2023)
  11. ↑ Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles LHuillier, Tracing Cambodia's Water Festival: A Journey Through French Colonial Archives (November 13, 2024)

Sources

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This page was last edited on 16 October 2026, at 20:29.