The water festival

Writing this after the event, we now know how tragically the festival ended. It's so incredibly sad, especially as our experience of the water festival was of a very fun and friendly event.
George and I arrived from Kampot on Friday evening. Our bus could only take us to the outskirts of the Phnom Penh as all vehicles had been banned from the city centre (motorbikes and tuk tuks evidently aren't considered vehicles). We piled into a tuk tuk to head to the centre, along with approx 4 million other people! We weren't sure exactly what the water festival would entail - the only information we could find was that it had something to do with the change of tides? We thought the river front would be the best place to aim for, so headed down. The streets were full of people celebrating and an impressive firework display was underway. Stages were set up outside the Pagodas with various musical performances taking place to an audience of very excited Cambodians. There was also a series of floats parading up and down the river with incredible light displays on them. We decided to head to the FCC to enjoy an arial view of the activity from the balcony along with a cold drink.
The following day we experienced the boat racing element of the festival - teams of 40 or so rowers, all dressed in team colours would race down the Tonle Sap, whilst everyone cheered on from the waters edge. It was kind of like Henley Regatta without the hats and copious alcohol! Stalls lined the streets, selling anything from clothes to souvenirs to cleaning goods (we guessed all at discount prices). There was also an impressive array of food stalls. The deep fried spiders, snakes and beetles looked particularly appealing. We decided to try out some of the street food, which was delicious. One lady, who we bought spring rolls from, insisted that we squat down next to her to eat them. She found this hilarious and we drew a few amused looks from locals as we tried not to fall over!
We left the following morning after thoroughly enjoying the festival. We heard the terrible news once we were in Siem Reap, a few hundred kms away. The whole country was in mourning and it was incredibly sad to see all the Cambodian flags which people had put up at half mast outside their houses. The prime minister announced a national day of mourning and said that this was the worst tragedy which had occurred since the Pol Pot regime. It was really hard to take in what had happened after such a celebratory event.