Welcome to the Jungle

23rd – 26th October

Crossing into Cambodia

The border crossing into Cambodia was just as I expected, a disorganised chaos where no one knew what was going on. Although I’ve heard the crossing between Cambodia & Laos and Cambodia & Thailand are worse! Our passports and visa money has been collected from the driver when we boarded the coach, and when entering the immigration building neither the driver or our passports were anywhere to be seen………… A slight moment of panic, but there was a queue of people and some security guards haphazardly handing out passports to the crowd, so I figured this must be the right place. One of those lucky moments occurred during this time, a Spanish girl, Ali, who is currently living in Phnom Penh, was on or bus and had done the border crossing several times. She spoke perfect English and not only did she totally put me and a Chinese guy at ease about the situation, but she also helped me exchange my Vietnamese dong and buy a local SIM card from some random Cambodian lady at the border crossing, within minutes I had my passport back and was all set, with some Riel in my pocket!

TIP: Cambodia mostly uses the USD, but Riel is also accepted. If you pay in dollars and need change, you’ll get it back in Riel. I found Cambodia more expensive than its neighbouring countries, the currency could certainly be a factor!

During the bus journey to Phnom Penh, the 3 of us had interesting discussions about the amazing ancient history of Cambodia, as well as its sad recent history under the Khmer Rouge regime (for those that don’t have a clue what that is, don’t worry I didn’t know much in depth either, I’ll explain more in a later blog). And of course the topics of Brexit, what’s going on with Spain & Catalan and the Chinese take over of many tourist destinations came up too.

Ali also conveniently showed me an app I could download to hail a tuk tuk, which I used on arrival into Phnom Penh to get to my hostel.

TIP: You can use Grab app (like Uber) in parts of Cambodia, but I was advised to download PassApp Taxi from Ali, a Cambodian version of Uber that apparently pays its drivers better than Grab. For both apps you do need a local number for the driver to get hold of you when they arrive – this is inputted when creating an account on the app. You can choose which type of vehicle you want to use, the rickshaw (small 3 wheeler tuk tuk) is the cheapest.

I arrived at the SLA boutique hostel in the evening and settled in for my one night there. The hostel was pretty sleek, with a nice cafe looking kitchen area, they serve nice food there, and fancy beds. I had a chat to Tom before heading to bed.

Phnom Penh to Mondulkiri

The next day I got up and had a walk to the bus company I was hoping to book my ticket to Sen Monorom, a town in the eastern province of Mondulkiri. PP is an interesting city, the area I walked through seemed pretty run down and non developed, but there are some areas with the flashy big screen ads too. After booking my bus for lunch time, I took a walk to the huge central market. They sell most things in or around there from clothes and jewellery to food and phones. I decided I needed some thin leggings for trekking and the gym and found some nike leggings (fake, I’m sure). I then went back to grab some snacks for the journey and lunch at the hostel – yet another smoothie bowl 😂✌️

I grabbed a tuk tuk to the bus station (arriving by the skin of my teeth, the bus company had rung me twice) and jumped on the bus for my nice 5-6 hour journey, at least this bus was quite comfortable and there was plenty of space! (Unlike many other buses in Cambodia, reading reviews paid off! 🙌). The journey was pretty uneventful, we did the usual random road side food stop on the way.

I arrived early evening and made my way to the Phanyro Guesthouse, which was where Simon was staying! We’d arranged to meet up again to go see the eles together 😄. We went and grabbed dinner with a Spanish couple staying at the guesthouse – I had Cambodian coconut curry, bloody amazing! And of course a couple of beers.

Ele fun 🐘

The next day was another trip highlight for sure, we went off into the jungle to an elephant sanctuary and spent the day getting to know the 5 eles that live there 😍. I was really nervous about booking anything to do with elephants in Asia, as I know there’s a bunch of unethical projects and it’s sometimes tough to tell which ones are genuine. I read up a lot about 2 projects in this area, the elephant valley project and the Mondulkiri Project, both of which looked legit. I went with the Mondulkiri project, as it looked a little less commercialised and is run by a Cambodian, Mr Tree. Getting our intro talk we quickly discovered that the guy’s a little nuts and can talk for England! Or Cambodia I guess 🤔. But he’s extremely passionate & genuine and his project really also invests in the elephants habitat, as well as the local communities of Bunong indigenous people living in the jungle. Many of the forest is been logged and sold for locals to make an income, but by training local people for ecotourism jobs and helping them to sell traditional medicines, Mr Tree hopes to minimise logging, saving the habitat for eles and many other wildlife. I was also pleased to hear that the mahouts use no sticks or chains, of course no riding and the elephants and free to roam around the huge area of jungle that the project is based in. Plus when visitors are there, the eles are coming for the food, so when they’ve had enough and want to leave they’re free to do so.

TIP: A lot of people skip this area as it’s a bit far out and off the normal tourist route, but it’s sooooo worth visiting! The jungle is beautiful and is perfect for nature lovers. But DO NOT forget the bug spray! I put a load on and still got bitten to death!

All the guides form here on in were locals from the jungle villages that had been trained up by the project. The group of us initially were taken into 3 areas of the jungle where different usually eles hang out, armed with bananas! It was so amazing meeting these beautiful animals up close! Everyone was excited and the first glimpse of Lucky and Sophie sent tingles down the spine! She ambled over, immediately searching for the bananas! It was crazy being that close, enough to reach out and touch the wrinkled skin on her trunk and cheek. We then went on to meet Lucky, Princess and Comvine, each with their own story (either having been rescued from the logging or tourist riding trade) and each with their own personality.

They’re quite different from African eles, smaller in size, with smaller ears, a different head shape and slightly different colouring, a different trunk (one ‘finger’ on the end as opposed to 2).

After spending a while in awe of these amazing creatures, we went back up to the camp for lunch. Then it was a couple an hour or so chillin in the hammocks at the camp, my home of the night, to digest before the afternoon……

We wandered back into the forest and down to a riverside where we swam in and patiently waited for our new big grey friends, again armed with bananas. Only 3 were safe to see in the river so we had the privilege of sharing the river with Happy, Sophie & Lucky (one by one). We helped wash them and fed bananas, such a surreal experience! Lucky was there last and just chilled there after he bananas were all gone, closing her eyes and genuinely enjoying her bath! 😍🐘 We saw the other 2 heading back to the camp again too 😄.

Hanging out in the jungle overnight

The day trippers then left, which included Simon and the Spanish couple, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity of sleeping out in the jungle and doing spoke jungle trekking!

We had our showers (yes they had a shower!! Pretty basic and cold water but a shower non the less!), then headed up the a hill next to the camp to watch a beautiful reddy orange sunset over the jungle. It was so peaceful, a real connection to nature. The peace was then broken as we walked back down, as the sun disappeared the cicadas started screaming!!!! I actually thought it was some machinery in the forest at first! I’d heard a lot of cicadas having been in the south of Asia of 2 months, but christ, I’d never heard this kind of racket! Guess we must have become accustomed to it overnight 😕.

We had an amazing traditional hilltribe dinner, sat around on a rug on the wooden floor of the camp. Our Bunong guide had made a traditional aubergine sauce cooked inside bamboo, it was the most yummy thing ever! Then came the rice wine, as expected 😒, so gross. After dinner we had a chat in our group, played some cards and the got an early night in prep for a 18km trek the next day!

Now the idea of sleeping in hammocks, our in nature, sounds like an ideal dream! In reality it wrecks your back and to keep the bugs out, the mozzie net zipped over the top gives the feeling of sleeping in a coffin…… for me anyway! Essentially I had a crap nights sleep. It was boiling to start of, but got pretty chilly through the night. I woke up several times and couldn’t wait till morning!

Jungle trekking!

However, waking up to the stunning view from our camp over the jungle took my breath away. I got up early and sat admiring the view, with one of the camp cats on my lap (which I had no choice about, she insisted).

The breakfast was just as epic as the other meals, great coffee, and a huge stack of pancakes each with banana and Nutella!! Perfect set up for our day!

We trekked for hours and had some good chats in our group, made up of a French group of 4, a couple from Argentina, 2 girls dorm Germany, myself and another Brit. The British guy was really interesting and had lived all over teaching English. The day was broken up by a stop for lunch at a beautiful waterfall where we had a swim, a much needed respite from our sweaty hike! The whole day was really enjoyable, apart from the leaches…….. 🤢 we had to keep checking for the lal suckers and removing them from our shoes and trousers before they could get to our skin! They’re so gross.

The day ended late afternoon in our guide’s village. It was so humbling to see their simple way of life and meet some of his huge family. His sister and niece wanted to hold our hands whilst walking us through their home, it was such a highlight of the day and amazing to see a slice of rural life.