The past week of work at the NGO office wasn't too eventful. The project manager had just gotten back from a vacation in Australia, and was getting caught up. So for the 4 days of my second week, I had almost no work to do! I helped to correct a few English documents and chatted with the coordinator, and spent a lot of time on facebook and email. I signed up for a gym membership and got back into some form of routine. The problem with that statement is the word routine, which is not what I wanted to be doing here, so I made plans to get away for the weekend - this time to Mondulkiri in the Northeast of the country. After all that hard work from the previous week, I think an overextended vacation was well deserved! Besides, the coordinator almost forced me to take more time off cause he really wanted me to see the country.
Am I ever glad I decided to take a bus to Sen Monorom (The central town in Mondulkiri province). I travelled by myself this time, because I just need more time to myself than the average person, but I ended up meeting 4 awesome people on the bus ride up and wasn't alone for long. Once we arrived in town, Rathana from Nature Lodge picked us up in a truck and took us back to this amazing eco-resort. I walked past horses, cows, chickens, domesticated cats and dogs and a slew of other small creatures to get to the lodge's restaurant. This place is really amazing, as it feels like you're staying on a small farm in the foothills. Such a peaceful getaway. Besides the 5 of us, there were only 2 or 3 other tourists here, and we really felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.
First order of business on the first night was getting drunk, so we all ordered a cocktail called apple pie, which actually tasted like a baked apple pie...Several drinks and beers later, and we were all taking turns at pool on the lopsided table. What made it even more interesting was the variety of insects that wanted to play with us. There were grasshoppers, ants, some other flying creatures, and a large, clumsy dung beetle that shared the table with us. The dung beetle was hilarious, as it would occasionally spread its wings and struggle to lift its comically massive body into the air, only to make it to the light bulb above the table and crash back down to the pool table on its back after flying straight into the light. It would seem that evolution played a cruel joke on these creatures...it was like a turtle had been given wings and no aerodynamics to go along with them. The only thing that made sense was its solid shell which protected it from itself, or in our case a 4 ball. To end the night, we brought more drinks to one of the guys' cabins, where we sang, created a record amount of inuendos and played guitar.
The second day here was a write-off, as it decided to rain for almost the whole day, which is rare for this tropical climate - normally it rains for 1-2 hours a day during the wet season. We were supposed to rent motorbikes to get a bit of practice in, but they strongly advised us against it, which I'm sure was good advice. I ended up stuffing my face all day since I was a prisoner of the rain in the lodge's restaurant. The three guys in our group of 5 decided to book an overnight elephant trek for the next day. There was a bit of a mishap in the morning, as we realized that there was only one elephant meeting us at the Bunong village. Apparently, we booked a foot trek with pack elephant, but the tour book was not clear at all about this, So Rathana did us a huge favour and drove down to the booking office to see if they could find more elephants. He came back with great news, and a few hours later, we were in a different village watching 3 wonderful pachyderms emerge from the forest. I was provided with a ladder to step up onto the male - named Mai - while the two other guys hopped on the females (couldn't avoid that euphemism). Shortly into the trek, our mahouts let us sit on our elephants'necks and learn how to direct them. You tap their left ear to make them turn right, and their left ear for the opposite. They yell 'Hao'to get them to stop, which never really worked for us anyway. Either grunting loudly or yelling 'Hai' was supposed to get them moving again. As I'm sure most elephants do, they would ocasionally disregard the commands of the petty little humans riding them and wander off the track to demolish bamboo shoots. These things have quite an appetite, and I was told they eat an average of 300 kilos of food a day!
The mahouts were awesome, and extremely helpful. There was a 12 year old boy, a 25 year old man, an 18 year old girl and a woman maybe in her early 40's. I couldn't believe a 12 year old was already in command of a 2-3 ton beast, and the biggest of the three elephants. The fact that none of them spoke English was also refreshing, and just seemed more...authentic. I would have felt ripped off if I had come to an extremely remote village in the jungle and been greeted by Cambodians speaking perfect English. Our guide - Dol - on the other hand, did speak a bit of English, and he had a funny habit of repeating himself even though it was clear that we understood the first time. This was exacerbated when he would get into the rice wine, and I vividly remember him explaining how to access his cell phone flashlight. He spent a full 10 minutes, while I tried to sit still in a swarm of biting insects drawn to me by the candlelight. Our first day of trekking was majestic, which still isn't a good enough word for the experience. I constantly caught myself thinking "holy shit, I'm on an elephant in a remote jungle of Cambodia, my life is complete." This sentiment was shared with the other two guys, as they both would bring it up ocasionally after coming out of the frequent silent dazes. We camped out beside a waterfall, which had a natural pool that we could swim in. There was a chair carved out of a tree trunk sitting in a shallow part of the pool, so we took the obligatory photos.
I slept in a hammock for the first time ever, which was quite an experience. I thought it would end badly, because as soon as I got in mine I heard slow, cracking sounds. The mahout came running and tied the tree to a bigger one, and thus redeemed my first hammock experience. I completely forgot to take a picture of the tree that my fat ass broke, but it's still in the forest, never to support another lazy tourist again. The next morning, we woke up to elephants coming down to the river for a bath. We helped the mahouts wash them, which was another once-in-a-lifetime experience...I mean, unless someone reading this works at a zoo or with elephants as a career, then it would be an everyday occurrence. We rode to another Bunong village for lunch. We asked if we could take a picture of the family at the village, and this was so well received that we ended up doing a half hour photoshoot with different arrangements, different wardrobe and different backgrounds. They loved pictures! One of the mahouts accidentally walked through a hornet's nest while on his elephant, and got stung at least 10 times all over his head. The Cambodians all thought this was hilarious, but we really laughed when Dol got stung by one rogue hornet and ran through the forest screaming like a little kid.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and soon enough it was time to trek the rest of the way to the village where we were dropped off the day before. We hung out with the staff and played pool back at the Nature Lodge until 2am and then had to pack for our bus rides back the next morning.
