First night in Cambodia

I made it to Cambodia!

I had no idea what to expect from the water festival as there's very little written about it online (in English at least), other than reporting the stampede which killed lots of people back in 2010 when the festival was last held.

I missed the daytime part of the first day but I arrived in the thick of it in time to see the end of the fireworks display over the river. That meant that I got to see fireworks on the 5th of November! Very impressive, extremely loud ones at that. I did, however, get to experience what happens in the evening. It's very difficult to describe but it's probably best summed up as "batshit crazy".

A whole country's worth of people descend on to the streets of Phnom Penh for 3 days. I saw literally hundreds of thousands of people (and only spotted 11 westerners) over a huge area and I probably only scratched the surface. There were big stages with live music, a "funky dance party", street food stalls lining the pavements, multiple large markets, boats with lights, people sitting having picnics, a fairground and huge crowds walking around. I've never seen anything like it.

It's extremely humid here but the local draught beer is only 30p, so it's easy to cool down. Tomorrow I get to see the festival in daylight.