Day 47 – Travel to Mondulkiri

It was minivan time again. And a small note here to say the minivans in Cambodia are excellent; very comfortable large seats with strong AC, and 12 people in the van – some of the best transport we’ve had so far. They stop at mealtimes at little roadside restaurants or service stations which invariably sell crispy creepy crawlies.

This time we travelled 4 hours even further east to Mondulkiri, the easternmost province of Cambodia, and home to forests, elephants, various exciting monkeys and waterfalls.

Interestingly, this area is very recently developed, and not much yet at all. 15 years ago, the 6 hour journey from Phnom Penh would have apparently taken between three and six DAYS, the road being non existent. The region borders with Vietnam and does have a road going there, so any imports and exports from the region went via Vietnam until fairly recently. So… any of you who came to Cambodia for your gap years, unless recently, probably didn’t come here!

We checked in to Mondulkiri Pizza Bungalows which was very fine indeed, with a lovely cold pool and a cute dog. 

Billie decided we had to do something that afternoon, so we borrowed their bicycles to explore the town, Sen Monorom. Unfortunately, the town is a series of insanely steep hills and the lakes in the centre that we decided to cycle round were fairly unsightly, just surrounded by a road. It got our blood pumping though, and the pool was a welcome refresher afterwards.

Day 48 – Elephant Valley Project, Mondulkiri

Elephant time! We booked in with Elephant Valley Project to visit their retired elephants, rescued from captivity working either in the logging industry or in temples. After an hour in the back of a very bumpy van, we were fairly deep in the forest. We hopped out and trekked for a further thirty hot minutes until we came across Ruby, a sweet old elephant who was used (or rather abused) in the logging industry for many years.

She’s blind, sadly, but her trunk acts very well as a natural guide cane so she’s able to slowly navigate her way round the forest, chomping away at the vegetation.

There are about 400 wild elephants in Cambodia, currently, and fewer than 70 in captivity. We assume the numbers of the rescued / retired elephants are in addition to these. This programme is about as ethical as it gets with elephants having a big forest to roam and visitors not allowed to touch, bathe or feed the elephants like some others allow. These others are often a force for good too, but it’s been proven as little human interaction as possible is best for the elephants. Anything offering to ride elephants is unethical and perpetuating the problem – stay away.

After hanging with Ruby (from a distance) for a bit, we went to meet Pearl who was by a river mixing mud with water to get the perfect consistency to spray all over herself amusingly. Coating themselves with mud keeps off mozzies and the sun – apparently why sanctuaries offering elephant bathing aren’t ideal, as you’re washing off their mud defences, and bathing should occur far less often than daily or twice daily.

Here’s a bit of video of our new elephant friends!

Pearl was super sweet to watch and we all asked lots of questions about how the sanctuary works, how they get elephants, the stories of the elephants etc and it was all fascinating! We headed back to base camp for a delicious lunch and views over the forest. Others would go back to see different elephants in the afternoon but we’d booked onto an afternoon forest trek instead!

A guide led our small group for an hour or so through forest, telling us about various trees, till we reached a lovely waterfall with a pool. We rolled up our trousers and waded in and cooled off for thirty minutes in the shade before heading back to basecamp.

Sufficiently sweaty and tired from a full day of activities, we indulged in some pizza and beer before bed.

Day 49 – Bousra Waterfall, Mondulkiri

Initially we thought we’d spend this day on some sort of wildlife hike to see some rare gibbons or black cheeked doucs (another characterful monkey) but the tours were ridiculously expensive ($250 per person?!) and if you didn’t spot them, which was likely enough, there wasn’t much else to see. Being all hiked out from yesterday, we instead hired a scooty from our stay and headed off on a beautiful 50 min drive to Bousra Waterfall – the largest waterfall in Cambodia!

It did not disappoint, huge and roaring, with a separate tier almost as big as that pictured just another 50 meters downstream. We loved walking round the boardwalks and pathways, seeing little birds and the like.

We spent a good couple of hours here before heading back on our scooter.

That afternoon, we went to do a coffee plantation tour. I’ll keep things short and simple with a couple of pics:

So, we’re back to quickfire exciting adventures, and after hitting some illness roadblocks towards the end of our time in India, feel like our travels are well and truly back on track!

From here, we will travel back to Phnom Penh, the capital, for a couple of nights, where we’ll learn about Cambodia’s unbelievably sad and horrific genocide, just 50 years old. There are upbeat aspects to our time in Phnom Penh too, with some vibrant trendy nightlife that we enjoyed, so tune in next time to hear all about it.