Here in Cambodia it is customary to arrange a blessing ceremony for the building site before construction starts or "before digging the first hole" as our contacts told us. Foundation works are scheduled to start today so we organized the ceremony early this morning. Luckily there is an old priest living next to our site and he agreed on running the ceremony.
The ceremony was fairly simple. Some fruit, flowers, money and incense were brought and a plastic chair was used as an altar. There was a long discussion beforehand of whether there should be chicken or not at the altar but apparently it depends on the type of priest and the type we had said there was no chicken needed in the ceremony.
The priest lit a candle and some incense, then he took an incense to each corner of the site and one next to altar and said some words and that was it. The tokens were left at the middle of the site until the incense had burnt out. By that time the candle had melted in the sun and looked like a worm trying to escape from the holder. Now our site had been blessed! Another ceremony will be organized after the work is finished.
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