The water festival is one of the most cheerful and significant festivals in Cambodian culture. This festival is celebrated annually for three days on the banks of the Tonle Sap Lake in front of the Royal Palace. The water festivals play an important role in daily Cambodian life and everyone takes part in them. The greatest is the water festival of the reversing current of the Tonle Sap Lake, which runs into the Mekong river. It's time is fixed by the lunar month of Kadek, which means it falls over three days either late in October or early in the first part of November. The king takes up residence in his floating house of the river in front of the Royal Palace. There are races and processions of boats by night watched by huge and enthusiastic crowds lining the banks of the River. The most popular events of the water festival are the pirogue races. These long canoes, which carry about forty paddlers, some standing some sitting are brought out from their storage places in the pagodas and launched with a traditional ceremony, which includes the painting of two eyes on the prow of each boat, on the festival first day, anything upto a few hundred pirogues assemble on the Tonle Sap lake close to the Royal Floating House. Each carries one or two clowns, who amuse the crowds by singing popular and satirical songs, while the boat moves slowly along, it's lead in the prow using his lacquered ceremonial paddle beat out the for the crew, while at the helmsman uses a free oar tosteer a course. Each day there are pirogue races in pair a course of about a Kilometer, followed by a traditional act of homage to the Sovereign. Then the sun goes down there's a great final. The pirogues line up en masse, and the canoes face together to finish in front of the Royal Party.