ThaRum

I will have three days off on Pchum Ben (in Khmer), Spirits Festival, from 12 to 14 October. Usually the boulevards and roads look quiet. People from every walks of life visit pagoda, or Watt in Khmer, to make offerings (bens) to their dead relatives. And many people visit their homeland, meeting friends and family. If relatives of the departed do not make offerings, it is said that the dead will not be able to rest in the forthcoming year. It is one of the most important events in the Khmer Buddhist calendar.

It takes few hundred metres from my house to workplace, accrossing a boulevard and Beng Keng Kang secondary school and a TV station. Day after day, blue sky is hidden by dark cloud, few hours raining has flooded many roads. It is unbelieveable, but has now a common. What I have to get home is trying other roads to escape from having my motorbike stucked. Nothing is usually unusual.

Phnom Penh, the business and cultural city of Cambodia, has better renovated and equipped than other provincial and cities. So what’s happened in the rural areas of the country? As irrigation cannot be fully relied on, farmers expect drops of rain. But it has been reported it has been drought in some areas, which suffers poor farmers greatly.