Forever a Foreigner

The following describes the adventurous journey to see the fireworks on Pursat City’s Golden Ship Island on April 15th, the second day of Khmer New Year, 2025. We brave the streets during the height of songkran, several days of public free-for-all water fights, where baby powder is included in the arsenal.

Khmer New Year is celebrated with traditional games and dances, and families go to the temples, worship, receive blessings from monks, do rituals of purification, and seek prosperity for the upcoming year. Every house sets out an offering table to welcome down the celestial divinity of the new year.

Before my sister and I even leave my apartment, I am hearing the shrieks and screams from the streets. The air throbs and pulses with distant rock beats. It’s the second day of Songkran, and they’ve already been at it for hours.

On the way down multiple flights of stairs, I catch sight of a pickup truck across the street. These days it seems like just about everyone with a pickup truck has loaded up with barrels of water, kids, teens, and water guns. These military vehicles of the water war roam the streets, seeking out targets. In the pickup across the street, the kids are all wielding colorful water guns in the truck bed, and they are exchanging fire with a station of battlers on foot camped out in front of a shop. One young woman steps out into the road, tossing a cup of water onto a passing motorcyclist.

Ah…getting to our friends’ house five minutes away is going to be interesting.

I swing onto my motorcycle and kick back the stand, my sister doing the same on her motorcycle. We aren’t wearing helmets. I look over at her. My sister is blond and fairer than I am. She can draw more fire.

“You go first,” I say, and then we pull out of my apartment complex into the battle zone. From my yard to the street corner there are at least three water stations outside of homes and businesses, and another truck full of water warriors pulls out of a side street in front of us. The gas station on the corner is manned with guys holding water hoses.

The kids in the truck spot my sister and she ducks, to no avail. Splash! Sure enough, she’s drawing the attention. I, with my darker complexion, evade the fire. I grin. My scheme has succeeded.

“Come on!” We turn the corner into chaos. There are cars and motorcycles everywhere. People are set up in ambush on both sides of the road, and there are more trucks full of kids. The press is noisy–engines and incoherent shouts and whoops–and the sweet smell of baby powder fills the air. Can we make it two blocks to our turn without getting soaked? I set my teeth and dive into the gap between two cars, dodging one station’s fire to my left and evading the attention of a truckload of teenagers to my right. Music throbs from speakers. My motorcycle creeps along, my shoes scraping against the asphalt.

Finally, I break out from the bottleneck of the ambush and head up the road. Free! And unscathed so far…

Up ahead at the road block a military police guy stands at attention. He’s wearing a beret and a bulletproof vest over his dark green uniform, and he’s cradling a big gun. He would be more intimidating if he didn’t have baby powder smeared all over his face.

A man at a water station sees us and yells, “HellooOoo!” hoping to get our attention and slow us down enough for a good drenching. His tactic is an old one. We ignore.

My sister and I take the detour road and wind our way through the backstreets. It’s pretty quiet so far… Rats! A truck is coming our way, and there’s no way the eight kids in the back won’t get us. We zip into a side alley.

Once we meet up with our two friends (also foreigner girls, and red heads), we park our motorcycles and head down the riverside street on foot towards the island bridge, laughing and talking. Our group of four draws ALL the attention.

My sister tells some funny sights she saw earlier that day: a Buddhist monk in orange robes with a water gun, a truck full of soldiers, soaked from head to toe.

There are sellers all along the sidewalk, grilling meat, frying snacks, and selling rice. One guy catches my eye with a broad grin. “Hello, sister!” I pretend not to speak English. Not interested in his duck eggs today.

The hospital is on the other side of the river road, and that section of the road is cordoned off to prevent vehicles and sellers from blocking ambulances. More military police are lined up at the road block. As we slip through, they look at us with interest.

The island is in the middle of the river in the shape of a great ship, and we can see the tents and decorations from the road. A large balloon hovers over a tent, advertising some brand. The sound of traditional music rises into the air. As we approach the pedestrian bridge, all the lights turn on. I clap my hands together. “Yes!”

Further down, past the island, the crowds are thick, and there is a hard, strong beat of rock music. We won’t go that way. Instead we cross the golden bridge onto the island, under a framework of fairy lights and streamers. Khmer New Year is pink, gold, red, blue, and green. The bridge is crowded, and almost everyone is wet or powdered. One kid, his face so caked in powder that he looks like a ghost, stares at us, his eyes big and his mouth in an “o”. Looking at that white face, it’s impossible not to laugh.

As we four thread through the crowd onto the island, we pause a moment to take in the sights. Streamers, lights, and flags fill the park. Lights are strung in graceful arcs from the golden spires of the memorial tower. Music is coming from the stage at the island’s prow, with a traditional swinging beat. A group of people are dancing in a circle around some plants, their movements conservative and traditional in style, moving their feet and hands.

Then I see costumed dancers come out onto the stage, holding traditional fishing traps. I grab my sister’s hand and race over as the musicians start to play on traditional Khmer instruments. I love Khmer folk dance!

The first dance is the Fishing Dance, where a group of young men and a group of young women accompany each other to go fishing, pairing up as they go. The background dancers go off stage and the story focuses in on the main couple. The guy teases the girl, and she gracefully slaps away his hand. He steals her basket, and she demands it back. Then he brings her a flower, and she wears it in her hair. Just as things seems to be getting serious, the background dancers sneak in to catch the lovers. I laugh, and a photographer a few feet away starts snapping photos of us.

The second dance is called the Romantic Scarf Dance, and is from the Cham, the ethnic Muslim group in Cambodia. Their costumes are very different, with yellow headscarves for the girls and black caps for the boys, and in each pair they hold the end of a scarf, connected but never touching.

When the dance ends there is scattered clapping. The MC comes out. “Hey, brothers and sisters, how is it? Are you having fun?”

“Yeah!”

“Now we’ll have another traditional song, and everyone is invited to join in the dance…”

The crowd, as if on cue, scatters en masse.

There are a lot of military police walking about. They are all young men in full uniform, with their bulletproof vests and berets, carrying those big automatic rifle-looking guns slung against them. But their faces, uniforms, and guns are white with baby powder, and they’re clearly having a good time.

“Come on, let’s walk around.” We stop at the ox carts wrapped in lights and take some photos, then stroll to the line of tents where cultural items are on display: scarves and statues carved from Pursat marble: idols, elephants, and p’tul cups. A group of men in matching white shirts are moving their feet to music under one tent, trilling their r’s and shouting, “hey-hey-hey!” in time.

My attention is quickly drawn to the center median, where a dozen short round cisterns have been set up in a row down the center of the park, brightly painted in yellow, red, blue, and green. Kids have descended upon the cisterns with water guns and plastic cups, engaging each other in water battles. The sidewalk on both sides of the median is soaked. We enter the danger zone, and kids look at us with eager eyes, half-wanting to attack, but not quite confident enough to do so.

We walk down to the far end of the island where the shrine is, the idol inside lit up by lights, and stroll around behind the shrine past the exercise equipment. In the mornings this is part of the regular walking track, but today we can instantly tell that this darker corner is where the smokers and ne’er do wells have come to hang out. We hurry back down the other side of the island, returning to the splash zone. One kid has a mist gun, and the spray fills the air.

Shards of clay pots crunch under our feet, and we look down, puzzled. All around on the tiled ground are fragments of orange. “Oh, it’s from a game,” I say, remembering. “You smash the pots to get good luck.” I look it up on my phone, though it takes a moment because the signal is bad. “Yeah, it’s played like piñata, with a blindfold. Smash the pots to drive away evil spirits and bad luck.” I look up above our heads, and there are empty strings hanging from a rope, where the pots should have been hanging. We are standing in the aftermath of the game.

The youngest member of our group wants to join the kids at the cisterns, and we all encourage her to go. She uses her hands to scoop water and toss it on the others. The kids are ecstatic to find a foreign girl joining their game, and soon she is completely and utterly soaked. Some adults watch, laughing. A monk walks by in his orange robes, holding a smartphone at a suspicious angle. Ah…it’s hard to be a foreigner.

As our young friend comes back to our group, wiping water from her eyes, my nose twitches at the smell of gunpowder. I turn my head and see that they are unloading familiar-looking boxes from a white van. “Fireworks!”

We sit to wait on the curb of the grass strip with others. Another camera guy comes in front of us and kneels, snapping shots of us. We look away, laughing at our own helpless awkwardness. Some of the water fight kids run over. One says in English, “Excuse me, where are you from?”

My friend answers in Khmer. “America.”

“Oh,” the boy says, still in English. “Thank you very much!” He and his friends run away, giddy with their accomplishment.

A group of female military police walks by, and I look up in shock. I’ve never seen women in uniform here before. They line up, guarding the area where the fireworks are being set out. Soon a man comes by with a megaphone, urging everyone to retreat further away to the other end of the island. We get up and move.

A guy sees us and whips out his phone, recording. We stand under the strings of lights and wait. It’s dark now, and the lights are beautiful, shining in many colors upon the wet, reflective ground. Then the fireworks start, exploding like gun shots into flowering rain. They are so near, we cover our ears, staring up into the vast night sky, now traversed with trails of burning sparks. Some go up in a spray, others bursting like a sudden bed of stars. To our right, a fire truck suddenly pulls up out of nowhere. How did that get here? The driver leans out the window, laughing and talking with the crowd.

After a bit we start to walk back to our friend’s house, still watching the fireworks as we go.

As we push through the crowd to get to the bridge, an older woman gently takes her hand and pats my cheek, almost like a benevolent caress. I flinch in surprise and then accept my fate. I have been powdered.

The bridge is crowded. Some have set up water ambushes. I lead the way through, pausing midway across the river to look out at the fireworks again. The night breeze blows across the river, the lights reflect in the water, and the fireworks explode into the night sky. The moment seems to hover, surreal in its lively beauty.

As we walk back to our motorcycles, the fireworks come to an end. Some kids playing by the riverside wave, shouting hello. I wave back. My sister and I part ways with our friends with a “Happy Khmer New Year!” and prepare ourselves for the water gauntlet.

It’s not too bad, though I lose my sister at one point and pull to the side of the road, craning my head to look for her in the press of noisy, water-happy traffic. A parking guard sees me and goes, “Woah! Foreigner!”

I see my sister, and we drive side-by-side down the side roads. One group at a water station gets me good. I flinch into the splash and then shake my wet hair back.

Almost to my sister’s house, a guy yells at his kid brother. “Quick! Get the foreigners!” But they are too slow.

I drop off my sister and then head back across town to my place. On my road I pass several motorcycles bearing people in pairs. The passengers are holding water guns and dancing. The night is getting wilder. Alcohol is now at play.

The tree of lights my landlord and his wife put up yesterday glows at the gate. I park my motorcycle in the row of other motorcycles and look at the offering table a few feet away. There are platters of oranges, bananas, and watermelon and two bottles of orange soda. Two candles are lit, the flames dancing. I think: “God made that fruit. It belongs to him. How dare they take what is his and offer it to another?”

As I walk up the dim flights of stairs to my apartment door, my keys jingle familiarly in my hand. My clothes are damp and my cheek is stained with a powdery hand print.

I unlock my door and close it behind me. Rough music pulses in the air. People shriek in laughter. As I wash my face, I sigh. I love Khmer New Year. I love the beautiful things, the music, the dance, the fun, and the water fights. But they are all mingled with darkness. Why must they be perverted? One day, on the New Earth, I look forward to the redemption of all things, where we can enjoy man’s creativity untainted by corruption. Maybe one day we can have water fights to the glory of God. You never know.