Elephants and more waterfalls
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2006
1
129
155
Trip End
May 27, 2008
Sen monoram,
Cambodia
Sunday, March 2, 2008
We hadn't quite realised what we'd let ourselves in for.....Jack had said 'good luck!' when I told him we were coming by bus.
The road for about the first half of the journey wasn't too bad, just slow going. We stopped for a break that was supposed to be half an hour so I trekked into a local market to try and find some lunch since we'd not stocked up on much food as we didn't realise the journey would be so long
My hammock at Jack's house
. When I headed back I started to panic as I couldn't see the bus - it was on the road and trying to leave but Ollie was shouting at the driver trying to convince him to wait for me. I felt quite bad but to be honest I hadn't been anywhere near 30 mins so he'd obviously decided he wanted to leavce earlier than stated! From here on it was such a bumpy ride up a long windy dusty road to the town of Sen Monoram and overall took 12 hours! I don't know how it took 12 hours but it was around 300km on the map (which we hadn't looked at!). It seemed to be a bit of a bad road and this was the only company to do the route and the bus was so rickety and the air vents just blew red dust all over you and into your lungs and eyes, not to mention the incredible head and humidity!
We passed some kind of shrine at one point (that was surrounded by bottles of water as offerrings) and the driver got out and prayed (obviously for safe passage), and then proceeded to drive like a reckless maniac! Religion is crazy!
As we approached the town we pulled into a hotel on top of the hillside which the driver tried to persuade everyone to stay at - we had been warned by Jack about this as the place is miles out of town so you are stuck there if you stay the night but some of the backpackers decided to give in and stay there
The road to Sen Monoram
. The driver and bus boy tried their hardest to convince us to stay but we kept insisiting we had a place to stay already.We headed to Mahogany guesthouse to wait for Jack as he'd instructed and he arrived at exactly the same time as us which was lucky! He took us to his house where we met 2 Canadian backpackers (Liz and Colleen) who were volunteering at his elephant sanctuary (he ran an NGO project to help local elephants and use them for trekking). They were tree planters so were helping with the construction side of things more than the elephant aspect. Jack took us to a good local restaurant which was cheap and had amazing chips (as he'd already informed us). He said the bus company we came on has a bad safety record so we were lucky (we did see the one coming down had broken down). Apparently a few weeks back, the bus braked sharply and a standing passenger shot forward and popped a hole into his head from a bolt sticking out. Not seeming to be worried he apparently stuck his finger to prevent blood loss and the locals put tiger balm ointment on it until they arrived in town to go to the hospital - how amusing is that!
Yesterday we got up early, grabbed breakfast at the same restaurant and took a long bumpy ride in Jack's truck to the elephant sanctuary
Stringing up our beds for the night
. He was basically building a small resort in the forest where tourists could stay to watch wildlife and trek on elephants, whilst employing the locals to help build and run the place, and paying them for the use of their elephants. We were given an elephant called Easyrider and had a short trial walk with her sitting on her back then went for a walk through a river sitting on her head which was a great experience. We ate lunch and slept in hammocks and chatted to our guide, Thon who spoke quite good English. He told us some funny stories about how he came to know Jack and how he came to learn English. Whilst him and Ollie were sleeping I could smell smoke and noticed there were some pretty big fires raging nearby - I think they'd been set by the workers to burn the areas and had got a bit out of control but soon after I went over everything seemed to be back in order. After lunch, we trekked on Easyrider to a small waterfall to swim and then rode home in the back of the truck (which was very sore on the derriere!). We had dinner at a different place just to make a change but that was a mistake as they tried to overcharge us - basically they'd said everything on the menu was 3000 as there were no prices shown but when the bill came they charged us 7000 per meal which was way too much but we had to pay it. We ran into Jack later to ask if there was any nightlife in town (joke) and he told us about a local pool bar so we checked it out and had a quick game but the electric in town goes off at 10 so we had to leave
Local people
. Today we borrowed Jack's motorbike and took it to a local mechanic as it needed fixing (which cost 2000 riel, next to nothing!) and organised a hire bike for Colleen and Liz as we'd all planned to go and check out some waterfalls out of town. Unfortunately they were quite nervous about riding it with two of them and decided not to come along so we set off alone.
It was supposedly a new road (which we had to pay a toll for) but they'd actually made a mess of it and it was all rutted. At one point we drove quite fast over a big bump that Ollie hadn't seen in time and we leaped up in the air......waiting for the big crash and the sensation of broken bones, we somehow managed to land with a big bump and Ollie carried on driving! Very scary!
The waterfall was huge and quite nice but they made us pay $1 to go and there was a lot of rubbish which was frustrating since we wondered what our money was going towards if it wasn't litter collection, plus the locals don't have to pay and they seemed to be the ones leaving litter. We also got followed around quite a bit by the locals which annoyed us but thinking back it probably wasn't a particularly tourist area and therefore wouldn't get many people in bikinis - note to self for next time
Getting to know Easyrider
. On the way back we realised we'd almost ran out of fuel and were still 10km from town but help was at hand in the form of a small stall with petrol filled whiskey bottles so we stopped off and refuelled and wer on our way again. We passed a few small villages with very friendly children and I doubt they saw too many tourists on bikes.
Back in town we went to the pick-up truck area to discuss the cost of getting one out of town to Seoul the following day. As we left, Ollie went to drive off and somehow stalled the bike and we just toppled over in an embarrassing heap. I managed to escape unscathed apart from a few bruises and minor grazes but Ollie had some nasty dirty wounds which we had to try and clean up back at Jack's place.
We had dinner at the cheap restaurant with the Canadians when Kayla, an Aussie volunteer from Sydne arrived so we went back to Jack's and had a huge team scrabble game.
