It’s now well over two month since I came to Cambodia. Now I live in Phnom Penh and have fallen into a wake up – office – pool – sleep routine. I take a motorbike or a tuk tuk for the 4-kilometer journey to and from the office, dealing with the horrendous Cambodian traffic twice per day. Food is nicer and just in case you overlooked my second sentence, there’s a pool! having moved to the capital has its perks, but the 40+ temperatures (real feel) are taking a toll.
Anyways, last month I underwent one of the most eventful weeks, one which has left me with a lot of stories but that I would not wish to repeat ever. As you know, I’m in Cambodia working for a conservation NGO, and one of their goals is to help people find sustainable sources of income. As I was placed in Banlung and constantly visiting the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary I would be making an assessment for potential ecotourism sites across some areas of the national park. The plan was to spend 5 days in the national park and walk through its forests – seemed like an amazing opportunity – exclusive access to a national park in northern Cambodia, what else could I ask for?
Unless you are a radical plain rice lover, food was not something you would be excited for. Breakfast, lunch, dinner or even for a snack, we had rice, plain white rice. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for some unlucky roaming chicken, there was some animal protein.
Day 1: The first day would be mainly about going by through the Srepok River. After the 37-km drive from the town of Banlung we reached the park, once again welcomed by the oil palm plantations of the so called “sustainable development”. We reached the village of Thmay, the same one I had conducted some interviews earlier in my internship, had some rice (surprise!) and got on an unstable long canoe.
Flowing downstream first I was struck by the sight that there were more trees on the unprotected side than there were on the national park. The trip I was undertaking was to find eco-tourism highlights in the park but all I could think of was how the hell would someone pay for this… Fortunately for the park and for my report, when we started going upstream the entire panorama changed. There were actual forests next to the river, we found 3 groups of endangered Annamese silvered langurs and saw flocks of hundreds of parakeets and a few hornbills. Finally there was something that I thought was worth coming for and preserving, just a few kilometers upstream from the same river which had shown us nothing earlier in the day.
Soon after the sunset we arrived back at Thmay village. After some 9 or so hours of being deafened by the motor, it felt weird to hear back the sound of silence. Soon enough we found ourselves eating some more rice and sleeping on hammocks, preparing for the day to come.
Day 2: Having had a calm first day I made the mistake of assuming such would be the nature of this day. Today I would be joining a patrol team for a regular patrolling session and documenting the wildlife across one of the protected areas (In Cambodia national park means nothing, so protected areas inside the national parks have are made). The patrol team was composed of 6 people driving in 6 motorbikes, having my translator and I as passengers for the 2 days we would accompany them. Initially I thought that if we were going to be going through the park in motorbikes then the trip wouldn’t be very tiring, I was very wrong.
We came across a river, the first of many, and I changed into shorts and walked barefoot across it. This soon became the rule, I had been carrying thick pants and big boots for nothing, as some swimming trunks and no shoes were the best thing to wear. Currently I believe this wasn’t the wisest idea, as an infected wound on my foot sent me to the hospital earlier this week.
You can’t really expect to see many animals when you’re on loud motorbikes while the rangers are non-stop smoking and playing the radio at full volume, but not like they listened to my request of keeping silent. We did see a few birds, but nothing that was particularly interesting. By the end of the day I just wanted to wash my feet and get into my hammock.
Day 3: This time the chickens weren’t the reason why I woke up, but an intermittent radio at full volume, just at around 5 am. I couldn’t believe that I would have to leave the safety of my hammock to deal with the inundated plains again, the sole thought of it was terrible. Again, we got onto the motorbikes and started the very wet journey. The issue was that the land was so muddy that the motorbikes would get stuck, so we constantly needed to walk. The barefoot walks through the plains were slow and painful, but after a few hours we were finally out on the main road. “So close to being able to shower and rest” I thought, but once again I was wrong. The motorbike ran out of petrol and the driver (who spoke no English) and me (who spoke no Khmer) were stuck for about an hour waiting for help under the scorching sun.
Finally we reached the village, I was able to have a bucket shower and eat some more rice. The enjoyment didn’t last long as we soon were back on the road. We arrived at the other protected area within the national park after a 2 or 3-hour drive through what seemed like endless oil palm plantations, to this day I don’t understand how this happened inside a national park. Apparently the “sustainable use zone” is closed for foreigners, the only reason I could think of would be for is to avoid any reporting on such deforestation practices but I was going with my NGO so there were no issues.
This time we weren’t sleeping on the forest but in a small ranger house, we arrived, left our bags and used the final hours of sun to visit the forest in search for the highly-endangered birds of the region. Luckily, we did find a nesting individual of giant ibis, a not so beautiful bird whose population doesn’t exceed 450 individuals, so it was a big deal.
Day 4: If you thought that sleeping in a hut would allow me to rest a bit more, prepare yourself to be proved wrong, the chicken that would become our lunch was screaming its lungs out as soon as the sun peaked over the horizon. Accumulated exhaustion was definitely becoming an issue.
Today we would be visiting the forest in search of the ecotourism attractions it had to offer. Once again, I found myself on the back of a motorbike on shorts and flip flops going through the forest. We visited several forest lagoons, encountering nothing but the “we often find X, Y and Z here” from my guide, but that often never included any of my visits.
After returning from these lagoons we went searching for a waterfall, “200 meters away” they said. After 2 barefoot river crossings and hurting myself with spiny plants for 30 minutes we had still not arrived. I generally really enjoy walking through the forests but at this point I was way too exhausted to enjoy anything and when we finally reached the “waterfall” I was quite disappointed to see it was only a 1 meter drop of a murky river.
Soon enough we had returned from the waterfall, grabbed some rice for lunch in a nearby house and drove until we reached another village by the river. Crossed the river by ferry and fortunately there was nothing planned for the afternoon, I couldn’t care less that there was no internet or electricity, not even the absence of bathrooms for the past 4 days, I was happy for just a free afternoon spent on a hammock.
Day 5: now it was the motorbikes… clearly no one can sleep past 6 in the morning in rural Cambodia. Tired and eager to reach the city later that day I walked towards the town’s pagoda to meet the first of the communities. I had conducted interviews in another village before but clearly, as I don’t speak Khmer I needed a translator. In some cases, even villagers didn’t speak Khmer so we needed a second translator and the interview would be English-Khmer-Lao-Khmer-English, evidently, by the time the information reached me I had no clue how much had been lost in translation but there was no way to find out.
The first community talk was in the village’s pagoda and the second meeting was in another villages school. We talked about issues which could arise, possible solutions and their perceptions of having international visitors in their home villages. Despite heavy rain and terrible road conditions, many of the people present had travelled long distances to be part of these productive conversations.
Finally, at about midday and having exhausted our conversation topics, we headed back to Banlung. Using up the little battery left in my phone to listen to some imagine dragon while driving in a military jeep through rural Cambodia I reflected on the previous week while at the same time deciding what flavor pizza I was going to be having for lunch.
Chronicles of the Traveller 