Festivals & Events
The festivals of Cambodia take place according to the lunar calendar so the dates vary from year to year. Check against any Cambodian calendar for the dates.
The festivals of Cambodia take place according to the lunar calendar so the dates vary from year to year. Check against any Cambodian calendar for the dates.
Special prayers are held at Khmer pagodas when the moon is full or just the thinnest sliver, marking Buddhist Day.
Chaul Chnam Chen
The Chinese inhabitants of Cambodia celebrate their New Year somewhere between late January and mid-February – for the Vietnamese, this is Tet. As many of Phnom Penh’s businesses are run by Chinese, commerce grinds to a halt around this time, and there are dragon dances all over town.
Chaul Chnam
Held in mid-April, this is a three-day celebration of Khmer New Year, Christmas, New Year and Birthdays alt rolled into one. Cambodians make offerings at wats, clean out their homes and exchange gifts. It is a lively time to visit the country as, like the Thais, Khmers go wild with water and talcum powder, leaving a lot of bemused tourists looking like plaster-cast figures. It Is not the best time of year to visit the temples of Angkor as half the population turns up, leaving you no peace to explore and reflect.
Chat Preah Nengkal
Held in early May, this is the Royal Ploughing ceremony, a ritual agricultural festival led by the royal family. It takes place in front of the National Museum, near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, and the royal oxen are said to have a nose for whether it will be a good harvest or a bad one.
Visakha Puja
Celebrated collectively as Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and parininibbana (passing away); activities are centred on wats. The festival falls on the eighth day of the fourth moon (around May or June) and is best observed at Angkor Wat, where you can see candlelit processions of monks.
P’chum Ben
This festival falls between mid-September and early October and is a kind of All Souls’ Day, when respects are paid to the dead through offerings made at wats. This includes paper money, as well as food and drink, all passed through the medium of the monks.
Bon 0m Tuk
Held in early November, this celebrates the epic victory of Jayavarman VII over the Chams who occupied Angkor in 1177. It also marks the natural phenomenon of the reversal of the current of the Tonle Sap river (with the onset of the dry season, water backed up on the Tonle Sap lake begins to empty into the Mekong). This is one of the most important festivals in the Khmer calendar and a wonderful, if hectic, time to be in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap rivers.
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