Cambodian New Year is the traditional celebration of the solar New Year in Cambodia. A three-day public holiday in the country, the observance begins on New Year’s Day, which usually falls on April 13 to 16.
When it is time for the festival, Cambodians leave the city and urban areas and head to their homelands for the most important celebration in the Cambodian calendar.
Here is a brief guide to the Khmer New Year
Those familiar with the vibrant Cambodian capital with its rammed roads, the incessant noise of construction, and melting pot of colour and energy, will be shocked to see the transformation during Khmer New Year – akin to a scene from the film 28 Days Later.
Abandoned streets, the occasional motorbike steaming down an empty Sihanouk Boulevard, no street vendors, shuttered shops and restaurants in Phnom Penh can only mean one thing: Khmer New Year, or Chol Chhnam Thmei.
Spread across three days – but bear in mind many Cambodians take the full week off – this is a time when those living and working away from home return to their families in the provinces to mark the end of the harvest season and the start of a new year.
With the majority heading home, the countryside is a hive of activity, the villages that dot the country alive with festivities.
Crowds of kids can be seen playing games in the paddies, parties – usually groups of Cambodians dancing around a booming stereo clutching cans of Angkor beer – go on into the early hours, and there’s real cheer in the air, as many families reunite for the only time in the year.
The first day of Khmer New Year is called Moha Songkran. It is believed that on this day a new god or angel is appointed to protect everyone throughout the coming year.
To welcome him, people, clean and decorate their houses, and wear new clothes. Offerings of fruits, incense sticks, lotus flowers, and cans of coke are also left at the spirit houses that guard entrances, a common sight across the country during this time.
Day two is Wanabat – Day of Giving – when gifts are given to parents and elders. Children also receive new clothes, and money and used goods are donated to the poor. In the evening, visits are made to the pagoda to receive blessings from monks.
The third day is Tanai Lieang Saka, which means a new beginning. Monks are visited in the morning for blessings so expect early morning queues at the pagodas.
This is followed by colourful celebrations in the afternoon, which often spill into the night.
Siem Reap is a centre of celebration during this time, with local holiday-makers heading there to see in the New Year and take part in the three-day Angkor Sankranta event at Angkor’s temples.
This attracts crowds of Cambodians to watch the series of traditional games, such as rice cake-eating and largest sticky rice cake competitions.
Wherever you happen to be in Cambodia, there will be a bunch of locals happy to show you the Khmer way to see in the New Year.
