Modulkiri

Mondulkuri trek

San Nang met me at his restaurant called The Greenhouse and we went about an hour and a half to the Home stay, which is a community house sleeping 8 people run by the WWF. I saw the only elephant on the car trip which was a working elephant.

The Pmong house people made dinner for us of the usual rice and veggies but with some soy sauce and I was in bed by 8:30 pm and up at around 5:30 a.m. After a western style breakfast of an onion omelet and toasted bread, we packed our backpacks. The only thing I had to carry was my hammock and my water, although fortunately I took another shirt, change of underwear and socks, a flashlight bug repellent and many kerchiefs. The entire trek was 35 km of which we did 6 hours the first day and four the next. We traveled through forest rice paddies and jungle. We saw signs of animals but saw none. I saw elephant foot prints and turds!! This is in the World Wildlife Federation reserves of over one hundred thousand hectares. I was worried that it was to be a typical tourist deal but do to the fact that I was willing to pay the high price of $125 and because I was connected to a naturalist guide from Siem Reap , Nuong, I got an off beat trek in the WWF preserve. The trek was really hot and dry and a lot of it was through dense forest of which the forest floor had been recently burned and was a lot of smoldering leaves and logs. I have no idea why the entire forest does not turn into a raging inferno like we experience in California. The going quite rough at the end of the day when we reached the river and had to walk over jagged rocks along the mostly dry river bed. This was not a raging beautiful river as being the dry season it was just pools of water.

The boys made me a walking stick and we slid down embankments and climbed back up finding our way up the river to camp. I was tired and my hips hurt as did my neck but my days of running and pacing myself paid off and guess I am in Ok enough shape. The guide Sam is 27 and the ranger is 20 and the boy ranger made the entire trek in flip flops while my Keen shoes are just about ready to be thrown out with a huge gash in the sole of my left foot.

We found our camp at around 2:30 pm. We had stopped for lunch, rice and veggies pre cooked in tuperware and we had rest stops with water and Pringles. At camp I went in the river for a swim and it felt so wonderful. Then I tried to catch fish with a bamboo rod and a hook and monofilament with some pork as bait,. There were fish breaking the surface all over the place. When suddenly I heard a loud smashing of trees and bells and people talking. It turned out just around the bend down river from us a band on Pmong with an elephant and an ox cart had just arrived to go fishing. They had left their village at 4 a.m and they make two trips a dry season to the river to stock up on fish. It was just my luck that these local tribal people showed up so that we fished and hung with them for the rest of the day and the next morning.

We had dinner around 4 Pm , you guessed it rice and veggies plus now a fried fish that was very sweet and an apple. Took a dip in the moonlight before hitting the hammock at 6:30 pm for my first ever experience at sleeping in a hammock. Not sure when I went to sleep and did check my watch often but did not get out of my hammock until 5:30 a.m, an 11 hour sleep.

When I got up the local fishermen were back pulling their nets so I took a lot of pictures an thought I had the setting right in the early morning but most are overexposed. It was a noisy night sleeping as you can not believe all of the birds and frogs chirping all night. Breakfast was instant Ramiken pork noodles, rice, fish and an apple. Broke camp around 8 and made it back to the Village around 11:30 a.m for a cold beer. The trekking was quite rough for the first hour on the river and I had heavy legs from the day before and the temperature in the rice paddy with no shade was around 100 F.

But I made it and it was wonderful, an experience of a life time and I am proud of myself and loved being with these very simple tribal people who are all so happy. They live such a simple life and believe in animism; they laugh a lot, they smile a lot and they seem to be so confident. The older man was 58 and had been a hunter all of his life and his body was so lean and muscular and he scampered over the rocks in his barefeet where I cautiously with my walking stick felt my way forward.

I feel fortunate that I am able to be here to be healthy enough to do this, to have the time and the opportunity to do this. I am now in a guest house in Samonoromon for $8 a night with no air con. I was able to take a shower at WWF Home Stay which is taking a huge ladle from the concrete water trough and pouring it over my head. It was delightful. OH and yes after the beer we had lunch of rice and veggies. This diet is getting a bit tiresome so I am off to find a bottle of red wine and some meat . Oh I took another shower here in the guesthouse.

One problem is that I could not keep my camera hung around my neck because it hurt my neck and also my shirt was soaked in perspiration so I hiked with a camera in one hand and a walking stick in the other and my water in a small bottle in my pocket. However, I perspired so much this morning that I think I drenched the camera and it is now not working, so I bought 5 kg of rice and stuck in the rice in a plastic bag and said a prayer that my Christmas present from Lauren my Canon G10 that I love will revive itself. .

Just came back from town and dinner. I walked into town which is full of red dust as the main street to my mind resembles an 1849 gold rush. The main drag is unpaved and is in the process of being paved by the Government but until then it is raw and crude. I went to see Mr Bill who is an American ex pat who had been working with the “ returnees” for many years in Phonm Penh. He told me that Boomer was in the 6th wave and was young and that most of the young ones did not make it. His computer data showed that 10 % were utter failures and 80% were barely marginal and then there were the 10@ that made it but many of those holding down responsible positions failed. Some of the top 10% also disappointed. He knows Boomer and know he has had his ups and downs. KK he could not talk to me as it would have been breaching confidences at to why he has such a support network surrounding him.
He says that the gangs in the US continue here and that there are gangs of the Khmer Riche who have the government support and are very powerful and that killing rape drugs ect. are common place. Bought a seed necklace from him and borrowed a flashlight.

Then I had a beer with Sam Nang and we exchanged emails and talked about future investments together. He met the love of his life 2 months ago but she is of a much higher social class and he is scared. Her parents have invited him to meet and he is afraid to do so because he comes from such a lower social strata. I tried to boost his ego but he remains afraid, He showed me the very ostentatious house in town that his 20 year old girl friend lives in and it is quite gaudy but impressive.

Sam gave me a moto ride to Bananas restaurant run by a Dutch alcoholic woman that I met while killing time on Friday waiting for Sam. At dinner was an Australian tourist couple and two American girls from Seattle who had been here since December working for WFF trying to document and make a film on the presence of tigers in the WFF preserve. They had brought over two Lab mixes that were trained in finding Tiger scat and had been here close to three months and had yet to see a tiger.They brought with them two dogs trained to that scent from the Us both lab mixes. They told me that when they go into the jungle the dogs sleep in hammocks too..
There biggest problems recently was trusting the locals and the heat. Due to the latter they had to quit everyday at 11. a. m. Amazing that they go into the jungle. I got a moto ride to my guest house and set my wrist watch to wake me up at 6:30 a.m to meet Mr Leang for my ride back to PP and to return to work.

This is really the frontier as I had to laugh as here I am having dinner and I am told that I am getting the last balsamic vinegar that the owner has and when we wanted another bottle of red wine, we found out that we had drank the last bottle of that too. The main street is dust, red dust and more red dust, Cambodian snow. You can feel that the entire town and area is about to change once the road is completed and the area becomes accessible. Mister Bill, an expat American told me that they only got electricity 14 months ago!!He