Blogs from Senmonorom, East, Cambodia, Asia

According to the four year old travel guide another passenger in the mini bus to Sen Monorom was travelling with, the road connecting Ban Lung and Sen Monorom was mostly impassable, difficult to navigate and should only be tackled by experienced dirt bike riders with excellent local knowledge. Well, things have changed, somewhat. The four hour trip was mainly over a built up gravel road, which was slowly being turned into a highway, with roadworks at intervals and short stretches of bitumen in between. The dust was horrendous, thank goodness I was inside an air conditioned mini van. The road deteriorated in the last hour and became narrower and bumpier before the van finally limped into the pot holed streets of Sen Monorom's market. I'm surprised we made it without breaking down, as the van had ... read more

The travel days are blending together...the ride from Sen Monorom to Phnom Penh was not as long as the initial ride to the north but none the less, we are tiring of the back seat of the truck...to go from moving most of the hours of each day to spending 6 hours like a pretzel is only marginally entertaining. Bunna and Mombo did however find a short cut which was a much nicer drive than what we'd experienced. The scenery of Mondulkiri is a huge contrast to that of other parts of the country we've seen so far. We now realize that the day we spent climbing during the run took us of a plateau of sorts, now we are descending into the lower lands. There are large pine forests which would look more at home ... read more

We all agreed last night that camping out was more of a hassle and time commitment than we could stand so in a little dusty town just near where the day finished, we found a guesthouse. Simple but clean and a place to shower off the last two days dust and dirt was all anyone needed.... Who would have imagined we would come to love the thought of a cold shower. The morning started easy, cooling temperatures were welcomed and only a short way into the run we came across Yoga Pig,who politely offered a few grunts when Jeff greeted him with a good morning,hey sometimes all you need is the slightest reason to smile and laugh! The day really just sort of happened along, looking at all manners of animal tracks in the sand, cow, ... read more

Whenever we ask any traveller what was their most memorable place in Cambodia, they always say Angkor Wat. Not a very surprising answer as in the end this is Cambodian, if not Southeast Asian most important historical treasure. If you ask us the same question, we will say - probably to your surprise - that it was Mondulkiri Province and Elephant Valley to be precise. If you follow our blog you probably noticed how big of animal lovers we are, however as much as it was a reason for us to go there, it was not the only reason why we loved it so much. We read about EVP (Elephant Valley Project) based in Sen Monorom in Lonely Planet but what you read is a mere glimpse of what you meet when you arrive. When doing ... read more

Greetings from Viet Nam! We're in Dalat now (weird, weird place.. but very cool!) but I'm trying to catch up, so I'm going to write about our time in Northeastern Cambodia first! KRATIE: We came here as a stopover from Phnom Penh. While we had a good time, it's probably not worth making the trip, but if you do decide to go, you don't need more than 2 nights. We went and saw these Irawaddy noseless dolphins (they're endangered), climbed up to this cool temple on a hill, and went to see some "rapids" (i.e. a really dirty babbling brook type thing). The temple was really fun though! The highlight of the trip though was when we rented these bicycles (push bikes). We took the local ferry over to this little island ($1 round trip) and ... read more