Cambodia's national Pchum Ben holiday is coming up next month, and this year the official public holidays will be from 13-16 October.
2023 13 Oct to 16 Oct Fri to Mon

Pchum Ben is a public holiday in Cambodia that follows the period called “Vassa,” a kind of “Buddhist Lent,” and has been kept with great devotion by the Khmer people for longer than anyone can remember.

In essence, Pchum Ben is a time to remember, venerate, and present food offerings to one’s deceased relatives. Ancestors are honoured going back as far as seven generations, and offerings are also brought for those without living descendants or in place of those who could not attend the ceremonies. Celebrants rise early in the morning to cook rice balls and other food items, which they bring to the monks at temples and pagodas. The monks chant suttas (Buddhist scriptures) all night without sleeping, then conduct the colourful and complex food offering ceremonies. Some Khmer give the food to the priests, while others leave it at pagodas for their deceased relatives to eat or cast it into a field for them to find. The first fourteen days see many offerings made, but it is the final, fifteenth day, that is the grand culmination of the whole period.

Pchum Ben is also the time when the “gates of hell” are supposed to open and let out those imprisoned there to travel to the land of the living to receive food from their relatives. Some are let out only temporarily, while others are thought to gain permanent relief. Offerers believe they receive merits by helping the dead and blessings from them but curses if they fail in their familial duty.

Cambodians all over the country will travel to their home provinces for Pchum Ben, and there are services in many towns and villages. Most ceremonies involve processions around temples and crowds that wait outside with lit incense in hand as the monks perform rituals inside.
https://publicholidays.asia/cambodia/pchum-ben/

Cambodian People Celebrating the 14-Day Kan Ben Festival
Phnom Penh, September 30, 2023 --

Cambodian people from all walks of live are celebrating the two-week-long Kan Ben Festival which kicks off today in the pagodas throughout the country.
This year, this annual religious festival will take place until Oct. 13.

As usual, Cambodian people go to pagodas to offer foodstuff to the monks. They believe that the monks will then convey the offering to their late ancestors.

Kan Ben is part of “Pchum Ben” Festival or the Festival for the Dead, one of the biggest festivals in Buddhism. This religious festival, which falls on the fifteenth day of Kan Ben, is to celebrate this year on Oct. 14.
- AKP

Phnom Penh residents offer foods and other necessary stuff to a Buddhist monks in a pagoda in Phnom Penh on the first day of the 14-day Kan Ben Festival.

The "hungry ghosts'




Photos: Lanh Visal, Lon Jadina & Sin Sareth, AKP

Happy Pchum Ben holidays everyone!

People Offer Offerings to Buddhist Monks on the Last Day of Kan Ben Festival
AKP Phnom Penh, October 13, 2023 –




General views of Cambodian people offer food and other offerings together with other daily necessities and cash to the Buddhist monks this morning, the last day of the 14-day Kan Ben festival.
Photos : Kul Renny
More photos: https://www.akp.gov.kh/post/detail/288684

Pchum Ben video from Kampuchea Thmey: