Thursday, November 22, 2007

Practice makes perfect

This boat came out from behind a potted plant with the cox on his mobile!
I was at the riverfront at lunchtime today, with a gang of work colleagues at the Gold Fish restaurant, which was a perfect spot on the riverside for watching today's practice for the numerous boat crews in this year's dragon boat races, for many the highlight of the water festival, which begins on Friday. I'm told some 432 boats will participate this year. And at times the Tonle Sap river today was like Piccadilly Circus at rush-hour (ok, slight exaggeration). However, it was nice to see the crews limbering up, without the presence of the mass hordes expected on Friday through til Sunday. The funnest moment came when an all-female crew cut right across a much larger all-male boat and the air turned blue with expletives...and that was just from me! The majority of the boats were sheltering from the strong wind and current along the shore on the Chrouy Changvar peninsula until it came to their turn to do their practice laps.

The all-female boat is dwarfed by the larger all-male crewed boat

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