From Koh Kong Island into the Carddamon jungle

---

---

After a week of work and not much sleep we opted for a quieter place.. koh kong the "city" is the place to go to to get to an untouched island and the biggest protected jungle in Cambodia... it is also the dead dog capital of the world... well they weren't dead but they all looked pretty close to it.. and so was the place itself.. this is the sort of thing that happens in most border towns Ive been to.. whatever they border they tend to be ugly smelly and have the most malnourished flea ridden dogs you could hope to see..

but we found our man Mr Neat at the blue moon guest house and deciding to spend as little time as possible in the town we booked the island trip for 8am the next day.. do bear in mind we had not slept from the night before and had got up at "8am" the bus actually came at 7am and we had spent 6 hours on the bumpy dusty road with barely any air con so weren't in the best of moods.. so we got an early night and got up bright and early the next day.. we went for a walk thought a mangrove Forrest. its an area of scientific interest and is protected as we went through we were told one of the politicians was building a new house there.. after a nice boat ride out into the ocean stopping only to buy fish and squid of passing fishing boats.. so fresh they were still trying to get back into the water! we came in sight of what was the island and what looked like huge oil tankers.. what was actually happening we found out was that Singapore was "buying" all the sand they wanted, as they were running out of land in their country. 8 to 12 barges were being filled up right on the coast. An area of outstanding natural beauty, once again which is supposed to be protected.. we was also told that since they have been doing this (about a year) the fish catch has dropped from 10kg a day to nearer 1kg!

we did make it past these great rusting hulks onto the other side where a beautiful beach did hide! we spent the whole day there swimming and having the biggest fish and meat barbecue i think ive ever seen.. it was excellent and only slightly spoiled by the alcoholic guady our swiss friend for the day..


next day we awoke at 7 am again.. but this time after breakfast we climbed on the back of 3 motor bikes and rode off.. we went from road to mud to grass until we were basically riding through the jungle. here we hid the bikes and walked for about 3-4 hours now this is the largest protected jungle area in Cambodia and is supposed to have wild elephants, tigers monkeys and other large dangerous creatures.. we saw a couple of deer and wild boar but otherwise i spent quite a lot of the time, well every 5 step checking my shoes for leeches! there were so many of them.. who would of thought that bright white converse and pulling your white socks up would be excellent trekking gear.. but it is and gives you the most time from when the leech first gets onto your shoe (a bout a 1 minuet) until it climes over the top and goes inside to spot it and get rid of it! there were several methods.. ours and the guides favorite burning them, off with a lighter until they pop.. twit and throw, the flick or if they've really annoyed you pull it off then tear it in half... luckily like i said i did spot most of mine before they got over the threshold.. but Adam wasnt so lucky and actually had about 11 or so over the two nights.. the worse was when he pulled of a plaster and found two fat leeches on an infected mosquito bite..

we did make it in the end to a beautiful river, which we slept in hammocks beside.. if the jungle is vivid in the day time it makes up for the loss of colour at night with a huge array of noise from all kinds of creatures mainly frogs tho.. we even went for a walk at night with head torches but didn't really see any thing (except the blood thirsty leeches) and we told by our ever helpful guides that the animals were asleep! i think we were probably just making far too much noise!

the guides mat, sam and ryum put nets across the stream and we ate grilled fish for breakfast! unfortunately we had to drink boiled river water which has a very smokey muddy taste..

the next day we drove a little further and stopped at an old house where we ate wild boars head.. wasn't the best but after that had gone we got two kilos of the best barbecued boar ive ever had! we then walked a while until we came to a big waterfall. after swimming in the river for a few hours we thought we be sleeping in hammocks again.. we were but this time the weren't strung up the were just lying on the ground, and when i say ground i mean huge hard cold uneven rock.. so wasn't the best nights/ hours sleep ive ever had but it was worth it to wake up next to the waterfall..

were back in phnom penh now and have spent the last couple days relaxing trying to get some sleep and watching some Cambodia kick boxing! next we head north in search of rare Irrawaddy dolphins and volcano lakes!!!

---

Photos

DSCN8674
we brought fresh fish of these guys

DSCN8693
the rape of koh kong.. one of the barges full of sand

Comments

[fanny]

:_)
i should have asked u to take me with you... :_) send u the warmest of hugs! x fanj