Jungle Fun in the Cardamom Mountains

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We set off on our overnight adventures in the Cardamom Mountains with our guide ‘Frank’ and his mate Al. They run trips into the jungle to see a waterfall. On arranging our trip ‘Frank’ suggest that we go off piste as there were some other tracks that he wants to try so the sense of adventure and the image of the Tarzan show’s of my youth take over and we agree.

The days starts early at 6am and we clamber into this old rickety jeep which looks like a good bump on the road and the whole thing will fall apart and take off. We are driving for about 30 mins when we veer off the road and begin on the jungle track. 10 - 15 minutes down the track and we see red signs instructing people to be aware of land mines - suddenly the off piste adventure has a sinister twist to it!

We arrive at the track that ‘Frank’ wants to venture down, so we drive down, through this narrow path constantly being hit with flying branches until we arrive at a bit of a clearing where we dump the jeep and continue on foot, down deeper into the jungle till we loose ‘Frank’ who has darted ahead, so we decide its wise not to continue further into the jungle and return back to the jeep. On the walk back up we arrive at the jeep and G discovers she has black things all over her legs upon inspection these turn out to be leeches, T has some worm looking creature sticking out of his socks, which are leeches that couldn’t get through the material and other ways to his skin. T discovers about 5 of the blood sucking cretins around his ankles and lower legs. After burning them off with someone’s cigarette (the idea is you put the cigarette onto the leech and it burns them so their head pops out and you whack it away, if you just pull it off the head can remain in your leg, a lighter will work too but the heat is much more fierce). We conduct a quick check that no more of the buggers are lurking around, happy to discover none, we jump into the jeep and continue, 10 mins or so later T feels something damp on the back of his thigh after a quick rummage he discovers another leech and his hand is covered in blood, so we stop and T jumps out and drops his trousers and discovers three whole ones feasting on his blood, another cigarette later and they are gone, a careful check of the never regions to ensure no more surprises and we are off.

We pull up at another clearing, and empty our jeep, machete in hand we head into the jungle in search of this waterfall. The path to the waterfall is well trodden one as the locals use this route to fish in the river. After a fair old walk carrying our equipment we arrived at the waterfall where we kick back and relax, having forgotten our swimming attire T used his boxer shorts and G fashioned her swim wear with here Pyjama bottoms and a vest top, true Cambodian Style (They wear PJs all the time over here!!!).

After a few hours at the waterfall we set up camp which consisted of a jungle hammock of US army issue, these are a basic hammock with a mosquito net fixed on, as the light faded we BBQ’ed on fish and chicken and a few mores beers before throwing in the towel quite early as we couldn’t see a thing, it really was pitch black.

The jungle is a noisey place at night, the continuous noise kept waking us, dark shapes move and your mind playing tricks on you leads you to imagine all sorts of crazy animals prowling about.

Finally, the light arrives and after a broken night’s sleep we head back to Kong Koh Kong. Back on the jungle trail driving along when stop as a almost florescent green snake is in the middle of the road, it is about a metre or so long with a clear tail and it’s in no hurry to leave the road. A couple of locals almost run it over with their motorbike and it was not impressed but it didn’t scurry away it stood its ground “I’m moving for no-one”, its highly poisonous, so whilst photographing it T kept his distance. After a while, it slowly made its way into the bush at the roadside and we set off back to Kong Koh Kong for beers and yummy food.

A little thing to mention is we have been told that the Thailand Lonely Planet says there’s nothing to do in Kong Koh Kong, which is a town by the Thai boarder in Cambodia, and it tells it’s readers to head straight to Sihanoukville. Interestingly the Cambodian Lonely Planet raves about Kong Koh Kong and the surrounding Cardamom Mountains. All we can say is, if you have time go to Kong Koh Kong, go, it is wonderful, also sort out a trip through Neptune Guesthouse to the Cardamom Mountains, they apparently have a much better tour than the one we did. This place is wonderful, there’s no street kids begging and everyone just goes about its business.

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