Launching a Boat

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It's 5:30 AM here and I'm awake from jet lag. It's beginning to get light out and I can already hear the honking and bustle of the city. Yesterday, Matt and I stumbled upon a launching of one of the hundreds of boats that will soon compete in the annual Cambodian Water Festival. There was a band playing out of the back of a pickup truck to mark the occasion. Last night I cut a scene together. It's rough.

The Water Festival marks the end of the dry season and draws 1.5 million Cambodians to Phnom Penh to watch hundreds of boats race along the Tonle Sap river. (Phnom Penh is geographically located at the confluence of the mile-wide Mekong and Tonle Sap, the major source of freshwater fish for the region. The festival marks when the Tonle Sap literally reverses directions, bringing an abundance of fish to the area). We heard yesterday that there are a thousand boats racing this year, a mind-boggling number. We shot some of them practicing yesterday and it's pretty amazing--roughly fifty guys paddling in unison, all screaming and chanting as they zip down river. Maybe I'll put some video of it up.

Today, we're trying to meet up with one of the boats manned entirely by people with HIV. They use the festival to raise HIV-AIDS awareness and show the average Cambodian that people living with HIV can do anything uninfected people can do (the whole racing thing seems pretty macho). Backwards, yes, but this is a country where the disease is only beginning to be dealt with, so to show these guys participating is extremely important. I believe that the HIV positive racers also do condom distribution and outreach when they're not racing.

The Water Festival is particularly problematic in terms of the spread of the disease because many of the 2 million people from the provinces will visit brothels, get infected and then take the disease back to their homes. So education and outreach are key here and that's what we're looking at in this part of the doc.