Last days in Cambodia

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The mini-van (not mini-bus) to Kampot was to pick me up at the Guesthouse 66 at 10.30am. It was a little early, 10.15am, but then spent a long time driving around picking up other people and sitting at depots so we didn't actually leave Sihanoukville until 11.15am. It was two hours to Kampot. I wasn't quite sure where we were in town when the bus dropped everyone off but I had seen the "durian roundabout" along the way, and I knew there were a lot of cheap accommodations near there, so I just started walking back in that direction. There were a few cheap hotels along the way, but I was hoping for something less than US$8, so kept going until I found a US$5 room in a guesthouse above a mini-mart at the durian roundabout. There's a giant concrete statue of a durian on the roundabout island, hence the name.

After checking in there I got some lunch and then went round a few more guesthouses until eventually finding another one quite nearby which was only one dollar more but twice the value (much bigger room, WIFI, a fan that worked at a higher speed than "barely on"). I would move over there the next morning. I also had to figure out how to get to Bokor National Park. The entrance point is about 7km from town, but the road up to the summit is then 30km long. There's no public transport there apart for tours, which aren't too expensive (US$10 per person) but are really the opposite of what I needed because they are just tripping tourists around the buildings and temples and waterfalls. I figured the best way to do it was to hire a taxi for the day. That way I could stop where-ever I needed, walk when I wanted, and I wouldn't get soaked if it rained (in Sihanoukville it rained torrentially for hours at a time on both days I was there). I found the town's taxi / bus stand and arranged a car for the next day for US$40. It wasn't really cheap, but at the same time I'd been paying US$10 for single motorbike rides (e.g. when trying to get to Ang Trapaeng Thmor) so I figured US$40 for a whole day was okay. And of course if I saw pileated gibbon then it would be totally worth it.

Up until 2010 you used to be able to stay in the ranger station at the park but unfortunately no longer. I think around then was when they started on destroying the summit. I'm not sure there even is a ranger station any more. Now the only accommodation inside the park is the Thansur Bokor Highland Resort - that is, the huge hotel-and-casino complex the Chinese built on the plateau. You can see what they have on offer here: http://www.thansurbokor.com/ . There isn't even a sign for Bokor National Park on the entrance or on the road. Instead there's a huge double-arched checkpoint beside the highway saying "Welcome to the Thansur Bokor Highland Resort".

The national park area is quite extensive I think, but almost all of it is off-limits and has no roads or trails. The sole road is the one from the highway near Kampot up to the summit of this one mountain. There are few trails off the road either - the only one I found (at the top) was so overgrown I gave up on it. You can see forested hills stretching away inland but you can't get to them. The birding here is supposed to be good, but I think the new road has impacted on that too. Previously (before the resort construction) there was an old degraded road and at the top were the ruins of former hotels and a church from when the French ran the place. The forest at that time was much better; now there are wide grassy stretches along a lot of the road's length and it seems that some stretches have been planted in foreign trees as well.

I walked for short periods on the way up where-ever it looked like the forest might be productive. Great hornbills were common, surprisingly so for such a large and easily-shot bird. I must have seen them about ten times over the morning. There were wreathed hornbills too, but they were less showy and it wasn't until the afternoon that I saw some properly - in the morning they were either flying over the canopy or were hidden in fog. Smaller birds were few but I think that was just chance. I found one bird-wave with common species like black-crested bulbuls and blue-winged leafbirds.

Pileated gibbons proved easy to see (again somewhat surprisingly in such a heavily-poached country). I found one pair of males early on, dueling with song across the road to one another, and then another lone male individual a bit later. Morning might be the best time to look for them as I didn't see any on the way down the road in the afternoon. This is the sixth species of gibbon I've seen in the wild, so the taxi fare was well-spent.

There's not much to see at the top of the road other than the flamboyant new resort and the grafittied ruins of the old buildings. I went to the waterfall as there was supposed to be a trail through the forest. The rest of the summit is all rank grass and secondary scrub, but there is taller forest at the waterfall (which was currently dry but in the wet season must be spectacular). I found the start of the trail but it never went anywhere. There were numerous well-trodden paths branching about but they all simply dissolved into the undergrowth after short periods. Maybe there is a proper trail I didn't find but I don't think so. There were quite a lot of birds in the forest but just really difficult to see because they were all up above the subcanopy and out of sight. I saw some fairy bluebirds, a couple of orange-headed thrushes and lesser racquet-tailed drongos, a green-billed malkoha, and a few white-bellied yuhinas, but that was it. There are gibbons up there too - I heard one calling somewhere not too distant but there was no chance of seeing it.

I had been going to spend several days visiting Bokor before heading straight onwards to Vietnam, but that was partly because I had anticipated the pileated gibbons being more difficult to find. I figured the birds I would see at Bokor would be the same ones I could find at Kep National Park and so it made more financial sense to leave Bokor as just that one-day visit. It is only US$3 by bus from Kampot to Kep, and the Kep National Park is literally right beside the town so I wouldn't have to be paying transport fares for getting to and from the park (or, if so, only a moderate tuktuk fare to the entrance); and then in the park I could just walk which should mean more birds would be seen.

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Kep is a tiny town which appears to exist just to accommodate tourists coming and going from Vietnam (the border is only 30km away). There are guesthouses everywhere, some at higher prices for the Cambodian and Vietnamese weekenders, and some at low prices for the foreign backpacker types. I stayed at the Khmer House Hostel in a US$5 room. It is on the main highway into the town, which is handy because it meant I could get the bus from Kampot to drop me right at the driveway. From the hostel to the main entrance of the Kep National Park is only a fifteen minute walk (and also about the same to the Crab Market because crabs are the other thing Kep exists for).

In Kampot, while waiting on the bus, I noticed a sparrow on the road which looked too big to be a tree sparrow. It was actually a house sparrow. It might seem strange commenting on seeing house sparrows, but in southeast Asia the house sparrow is seldom seen so when I do see one it is noteworthy enough.

I set off to the national park soon after arriving at the hostel. It was approaching midday, so extremely hot - over 30 degrees - but I figured I'd get the lay of the land. The park is basically a big forest-covered hill with a dirt track running around the outside and with a few trails through the centre. The entry fee is only one dollar. The checkpoints are generally unmanned, but the rangers roam around the track on their motorbikes handing out entry tickets. The side of the park I was on was shaded by trees so that was okay, and there were quite a few birds around despite the heat. Nothing was particularly outstanding, but they included a couple of puff-throated babblers foraging on the track, various warblers like eastern crowned and Arctic, and a dark-sided flycatcher. A troop of crab-eating macaques made only the fourth mammal seen in Cambodia on this trip.

At one point there is a "transverse trail" across the top of the hill. I took this as a short-cut, which was dumb. The first bit was almost vertical - despite steps cut up the hill in parts I was still having to use my hands when climbing - then there was a relatively level stretch at the top for about thirty metres, and then it went straight down the other side again. I wouldn't be taking that trail again!

Early next morning I went back to the park, hoping for lots more birds. There's a secondary entrance point behind the Kep Lodge which would have cut half the walking time to get into the park, but I couldn't find it. Nobody gets up early in this town so the Kep Lodge was deserted and there were no signs for the path. I wasted a bit of time trying to find it, and then continued on to the main entrance. The only mammals I had seen yesterday were the macaques, but this morning there were variable squirrels all over the place. There was one fig tree which had about ten in it, and then there were many others all along the trail. Variable squirrels are so-called because there are many subspecies with distinct colourations. The ones here are called cinnamomeus because they are almost entirely bright cinnamon in colour.

There were more birds than yesterday, but still nothing I hadn't seen elsewhere. The fig tree had thick-billed pigeons in it amongst the squirrels, and elsewhere there was a great iora in a bird-wave, a Hainan blue flycatcher, and a pair of hill mynahs.

I only spent the first half of the day in the national park, after that it was too hot. I retreated to the beachfront where strings of shacks and shops provided shade, a sea-breeze, and food. Unfortunately the place I parked myself had a menu three times the prices of everywhere else, and I - misreading the prices because that extra zero really shouldn't have been on there - ended up having to pay over US$17 for a plate of crabs. I was impressed with neither the cost nor my mistake. The sunset was nice though.

And that was my last day in Cambodia. The next day I started on the Vietnam leg of the trip.



Cambodia had seemed very expensive to me, but I did wonder if that was a false impression due to having to pay for everything in US dollars. In just ten days I spent US$469, which averages out at just under US$47 per day - by far the most expensive country of the trip. And I haven't even really done anything! The dolphin boat at Kratie cost US$9 and the taxi for Bokor cost US$40, but otherwise there were just guesthouses, transport, and food. However a substantial chunk was also on the Cambodian visa (US$30) and Vietnamese visa (US$55). I removed those from the total, and it came out at US$38.40 per day - still more expensive than any of the other countries by quite a substantial margin (the next most expensive average was the second round of India at US$27.50 per day).

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