Khmer New Year- frogs, a funeral and stormy weather

Fried frog!

Soeun spent a few days with friends in a village for the biggest holiday of the year. Normally we would visit relatives in the province, but its not practical for me to travel at the moment so this was the next best thing.

 Lots of dancing, games and yummy food, also a funeral. This time of year is extra dangerous on the road and a member of the community he was visiting had a fatal moto accident.

It was awkward as the dancing place in the village was right near the deceased's house. Normally the funeral would have involved everyone and gone on for a few days, but they just had some monks chant for half an hour and then the dancing continued as normal. That was on the 3rd day of the holiday, the 4th day there would have normally been dancing too, probably as by then everyone knew about what happened and didn't feel it was appropriate.

It was only meant to be 2 nights away for Soeun, but on the day he was supposed to ride the moto back to Phnom Penh it was too dangerous due to wind and lightening. So he tried again the next day, but there were still storms. He finally came back, 2 days late and got some friends to ride with him to make it safer. So they cut their stay in the village short to help him, but then found their student accommodation wasn't accessible so ended up having to stay 2 nights with us!

So the last 4 nights have been different to how we expected, but seems like its all settled down now. Even the weather seems to have gone back to mostly just hot.