So I’ve been back to Sen Monorom yesterday, first to keen to enjoy the treats of being back in civilization, then too keen to talk to Sheery in the restaurant-bar, which I did until I knew I now have to go pack and then go to sleep.
I haven’t looked at the photos myself yet, but I’ll try to pick them out and not post more than a 100 elephant ones….
Monday morning – a classic – saw me quite nervous, having ordered my breakfast the evening before, including the excellent cappuccino from Nature Lodges coffee machine which needs 30min to heat things up. Which is a bit funny, honestly, but mornings in Mondul Kiri (that’s how they write it on the car’s license plates) tend to be chilly. A tuktuk took me, my daypack and my handbag stuffed to the brim („overnight bag“) to the hangout restaurant (I suggested to be taken to the hangover restaurant to the tuktuk driver – definately too early) and then I recognized other nervous looking tourists by their huuuuuge overnight backpacks. Anyhow a bit later we were on our way to Elephant Valley Project and I calmed down talking to Poppy and Nigel, both very nice and providing some dry British humour when badly needed by the German nervous solo traveller.
classic start of project photo – I figure it’s documentation of how many go in, how many will be left in the end…
We walked, our overnight bags were taken by moto, as were some other things. I didn’t think anything about the sugar cane, now looking at it I associate them being crunched by an elephant and the noise that makes. And baby elephant Diamond TRYING to crunch it like his mom, highly unsuccessful but very very cute (proves failing is sexy).
We then went off pretty fast to go for the first elephant meeting, that is to go trekking down to the river into the forrest and the valley. Mondul Kiri is relatively cool, but at the same time incredibly humid. Plus we had rain on and off in between, although a lot of times it was very very light and we were lucky in how it did not interfere with our trekking. However, I honestly was worried, because already on the way from that famous entrance sign to the „basecamp“ the way was very slippery, and that green mossy thing on the earth seen up above is like the rocks in St Feliu with that slippery green stuff on them – nasty unless dried out and here, they rarely ever did.
I felt comforted by the fact that the others, mostly equipped with „real“ mountain boots rather than sneakers (semi-pro Angelo doesn’t count because he’s also climbed the basecamp at Mount Everest and he plans to tent on the beaches of Cambodia, in the wilderness-survival-hierarchy he tops me clearly…), would slip as well. I managed to not slip down apart from one occasion when I tried to sit on the other side of the branch which sent on my lovely behind, but that was a 5cm fall in clearly defined half-mud and it was on the last day and it was while building a hut, not while trekking aaand it was more due to the famous Oktoberfest effect, when two people sit on the sides of the bench and one gets up….. Anyhow, where was I. My shoes. I love my sneakers dearly (now even more as we both have survived), and they do have some grip but for this kind of terrain – I didn’t feel very secure and I do have a healthy amount of respect knowing the Alps. I stopped making jokes on the inside about „Cambodian Switzerland“ after going down the first hill. I couldn’t do any photos as I was concentrating really hard on the path. We were offered to use sticks (teakwood or liane wood, I’m guessing here) with the peeling still on. I used them a lot, also because I couldn’t judge the ground on how slippery it would be, my shoes, the combination of both… Anyhow after 15min in I had a nice fat already open blister on my thumb from using the stick so heavily. Didn’t relax me really. You do forget it when the first elephant lady makes her appearance, though, and our two Bunong (the local tribe) guides, Thoun and Ian, really covered us well, one walking up front, one walking up behind to make sure we’re all there.
And look at how a lady knows how to make an appearance, mark you it’s the elephant spirit in her as well that shines through with charisma
haha, reminds me a bit now of „reaaady or not, here I come…“
The elephants in the project are retirement-age mostly, and that’s literally, they range from 40 to 73, most of them around 60, oh no Pearl is in her mid-thirties and became pregnant by a wild elephant (yes yes, it’s not like non-existing sex due to the cold in the Himalaya, cheers to John and Angelo), which is now the youngster-exception and only 6 months old.
Anyhow these elephants are either „freed“, that means they have a final contract with the project, to stay forever = until they die. Some of them have shorter contracts, a year, 5 years, … and their owners get paid an income in the meantime. The mahouds (in the picture), also paid by the project, do take care of „their“ elephant (not exclusively, because they also do have weekends, the mahouds, not the elephants), so know where they are, take care they eat and drink enough, bathe them if needed, … The project, again, performs health checks on the elephants, to check if they do eat and drink enough, have any other problems, injuries, need the vet, ….. Quite something.
I wasn’t so happy as the visiting tourist, even if I see where my money is going (the trip was quite expensive), so I kept making jokes that the service would have been much better and comfort higher, had I been an elephant. Admittedly, that’s only true once they enter the project and I guess I have barely touched the age yet that would justify a wild life lived and deserve that kind of retirement. Anyhow, that much for some background. We were provided with that in the welcome-intro speech by Jemma, the leader of the pack (human- and elephant-wise), but at nighttime I dearly wished we’d also have received an intro on how to make best use of the accomodation, the animals you encounter, the sounds at night, … Most of which I happened to learn before by pure chance, and no there was no other tarantula (not even given the fact that last night, back in town Sen Monorom, I did stay in the tarantula-hug and not in the frog-hut but the tarantula was shyer than me, and I made very sure to check every corner before advancing towards the toilet).
The forrest in itself would have been worth the trekking, again I didn’t take that many pictures out of nerves, but a few did make it onto more or less sharp photos – like this pink beauty that – is a mimosa!
recognize the leaves? Tickle it, they become schizophrenic characters and close up. Beautiful.
Classic of elephants being bathed by mahouds, but not all (as I learned yesterday) – some can do it on their own. But then they need to know how to rub their back against the next bank, so they get rid of – eeeer I think it was the flies. Those buggers can lay eggs into the skin. Basically the mahoud is needed to take care of things these elephants, as they didn’t grow up in the wild, haven’t learned.
and if you think feeding bananas is a good thing – it isn’t. I hope I remember that right. Oooh finish with the do’s and dont’s around trunks, let’s continue my photo diary.
It is important to breathe (deeeeeep into your perineum, psen-joke)
ask for help if you don’t know how to scrub on a bank
and finish when you’re finished.
also, feel good when you’ve finished washing your mahoud.
Search pic – where’s the elephant? That’s right, behind the happy Barbarian
you know this is the first encounter of 4, and I’m copying every 3rd picture, and I took A LOT. If you’re not keen on seeing elephants. And then more elephants. And trees. And trees with elephants. You might wanna skip this. There ought to be a pic of my superdirty sneakers at one point, though. Just don’t complain I didn’t warn you.
Friends are important.
Here’s proof my sneakers did look nice in the beginning (and since I’m not sure part of that red colour is ever going to come off again, mark that this is a historic picture)
aaaand of course, they are next to the elephant footprints. By the way even an elephant slides in the mud, so that did make me feel better, but then again they balance better than I do and their weight is a natural brake… By the way I measured an elephant yesterday, a healthy one – and belly-measure (behind the shoulders and the nipples…) was 3,70 metres. That puts the footprint into relation.
Termites (there are many)? Baloo the bear? Noooo, elephant rubbing their back on the tree.
…or the head
…or the ear…
….or — well you know….
in case you need a candle in the jungle – find a resin tree, cut a hole in it, light a fire, let it bleed (i didn’t say it’s a nice method), come back, collect the resin, mix it with dried elephant poo –> burn it. and if you get to test-sniff, don’t stuff the stick up your nose. It’s not a Covid test.
ants or termites – one of the two. I think it was ants.
The elephant spirit that the Bunong people believe in – among others – is seen when the elephant looks you directly into the eye. I swear. The Bunong believes there’s spirits in the animals, in the trees, …. I like that – mostly cause I can feel it.
The German elephant likes to shovel earth on its head and back to protect against insects and the sun…..
follow the guide
…or the tail…
And that is where tarantulas REALLY live – not in bathrooms (Bantop Tuhk, I practiced Khmer on the bus today, the girl sitting next to me helped, and I thought that one would be a good idea, also so John doesn’t get it if we meet again and I talk about toilets a lot which is tmi)
It’s their cave-hole, with a nice trap-door, that they open when prey passes by (smaller things than humans…). Thoun opened it for me. No tarantula showed, though. Yes as if I was sad about that.
Sugar-cane crunching, they love that
I love it very much, too. And no, that’s not a shadow on my right side, it’s diiiiiiirt. That white shirt looked close to dying in the evening, it’s currently undergoing laundry and it’s a big question how it will look tomorrow noon. I guess I could still give it a final kill while snorkling in the next 2 weeks…?
Did you know an elephant’s tail shows their heart-rate by how fast it bounces from the left to the right to the left to the right…?
And did you know the light can shine through their ears and make their ear-freckles show, with an orange background? Didn’t manage a photo of that…
My hut down the hill (a looooong way down the hill), with lots of dorms, but noone in there but me. My room was up the stairs on the first floor. Bathroom is down the path 10 metres. The room’s door didn’t close. At first it didn’t open and I had to go up the hill twice to get help, rather than taking a shower. It’s been a funny ritual that a lot of times I need to get help first and then things work out but a bit weird. Oh and by the way I almost slipped seriously in my superfancy-today-bathroom when getting out of the shower. Not putting a bath-carpet (there’s a bath carpet!!!!) on the floor wasn’t a good idea. And it made me laugh out loud – 3 days trekking in slippery mud and no fall – and then slip in the fancy bathroom of the Mekong Dolphin Hotel. Cheerio, but I failed nicely.
Bathroom – one of 3 (it’s the dorms, right), which gave me a nice choice, especially at night.
First one had ants and (small) spiders in the toilet bowl at night. They were unimpressed by me trying to flush (you manually flush with a small bucket swimming in a huge bucket of water that’s standing in the corner – oh and more PSEN insider jokes: THERE WAS A TOILET BRUSH!!!! I should have taken a photo to argue with Eden Roc management. Oh well.). So I went for number 2. Number 2 had the already familiar big brown frog in it that got very scared when I closed the door and jumped against the walls around. I reopened the door, but it didn’t find the exit. It then did a decisive splash into the flush-huge-bucket and hid at the ground – hoping I would not see it. I pretended I didn’t but didn’t dare to flush. Toilet 3 turned out to be animal-free. Until a day later when there was a small frog (quote of a co-traveller thereafter: „the cuter they are, the more poisonous….“) IN the toilet, looking up on me. I decided I could move it by watering it, took the small flush-bowl. And that wave of water — flushed the frog. I still feel guilty about it and am very thankful for no German killing energy here. That one gave me a guilty feeling and killing a small tree lateron. Even if that was my first logging. It was a tree complete with leaves on its branches, you know. Now part of a hut. I was hoping to plant some trees. Next time. Could I use an elephant for that??? Have it water the tree maybe?
View from the bathroom…
Before darkness fell and the door didn’t open and noises came in (Mitch lovingly suggested to leave the door open because „nothing happens“ which didn’t help my feeling of comfort)
Noises in the jungle. In the morning: cool, cause you can hear elephants trumpet further away. Cicadas, which I normally love – well there’s one special Cambodian jungle kind that wakes up at night and it is huuuuge and it makes a sound — like a washing machine at high pitch. Or the annoying part somewhere between a dentist’s drill and an ambulance. And then there’s constant sounds similiar to steps – on wooden stairs… on the roof. I found out on the 2nd morning part of the sound of the roof comes from leaves falling down on corrugated metal (Wellblech…). And that, folks, is why it’s nice to use palm leaves…. Just a thought. NIghts were quite cold, incredibly damp at the same time (the bedsheet, the bed, the hair – all was damp), very small flies enter the mosquito net, the bed had quite a bow in it that pained me – I had a really bad sleep and the next morning, I was close to crying before taking off. Coffee helped a bit, but not really. The forrest helped. Nevertheless, it wasn’t clear despite all the info we got it would be that intense, especially given accomodation – next time I’d do a daytrip or several and go back to town in the afternoon. Like Jemma does…
sweet dreams…
Geckos taken to the next level, they are huge, have colourful spots and tend to be territorial, at least only with each other. They hiss at each other, then go and then one fell down with a very loud thump. That was in the (open) lounge, we shriek-laughed (and John famously said „oh shit“) and took photos. Good tourists.
This is the cricket that we tickled out of its cave-hole. Ian and Thoun showed us. You take a fluffy gras. You stick that into a bunch of the big black ants (in the forest, don’t try this in a bathroom), which makes the ant crawl on the fluffy part of the gras (the gras is long, which is important for your body parts that hold on to it). Then you stick that combo into the cave. The ants bite the cricket, the cricket jumps out. The pro-wilderness-human takes the cricket – and fries it. Or sells it, so that someone else fries it.
Ian also demonstrated to me what to do with red ants, which didn’t come as a surprise as I took an ant-paste-pic at the market before, but those were dead. So Ian takes something from a branch and says „ouh, red ants, look!“ -> shows it between his two fingers, where it’s struggling -> „you can eat it“ -> eats it, picks up another, looks at me, smiles -> „you want to try?“ —– „Khnoym thoom said“ – or something pretty close to that, which I said in English, meaning „I am vegetarian“. The truth is, I might have tried, had it been dead, so if someone else had killed it for me. Westerners. I bet Ian does that on every tour… Anyhow I asked if they don’t bite, he said only a little bit. Ok admittedly that’s like Cambodian spices sometimes, so – naaa someone else go and try. It’s a thing around Mondul Kiri for people to say „I don’t eat insects“. It’s like in Munich „I’m vegan“, same same but different 😉
More elephants, day 2…
including mommy Pearl and her baby, Diamond
Of course there’s also aunts….
…and mahouds…
…and plastic bags, that were taken away under protest, which again proves the point of wooden toys being better than plastic ones – apart from lego.
We all got soaked in this river. And in the 2m of muddy swamp, unfortunately on the way back, the river came first, then the swamp, so that’s where my shoes took on a rusty shade of red, secretly documented in the truck on the way back to the entrance to basecamp
The road brought back all the memories of Ethiopia, which was weird and very nice all the same. I feel as if travels do connect to each other and then when I do a new one, after a bit of time it’s like a fire lighting up on one hill and then the fires on my other travel hills, far away in a distance, respond – and they all communicate. Like I imagined Apaches in my childhood…..
By the way I enjoyed nothing more than today than having dry feet. Mostly because I did wash my shoes thoroughly yesterday at dawn, and of course they didn’t dry a lot overnight, so I’ve been travelling with wet feet half the day. Air-conditioning in a weird way, not recommended though.
Here one of the small cicadas (those make a lovely sound) that can also be eaten. By humans, but also by the basecamps black fat cat that I’m sure has a name, but was named by me Arthur, like King Arthur, because he’s a fighter and a king. According to Mitch, he specializes in hunting insects, preferably cicadas and — big spiders. I want him in my room but have I mentioned that was far far away down the hill…? Anyhow the big cicada – one of them flew in the kitchen and it was HUGE. I mean that. Ok, smaller than the geckos…
Favourite view from the lounge into the valley with my favourite pot-plant. Took a pic of its name, but it’ll never grow to that size back home.
Black lilly in the forest, that one’s rare, Jemma said, and I guess that’s true – I’ve never seen a black flower.
And believe it or not, that’s all for now, folks. Regarding elephants 😉
I enjoyed very very much coming back to Nature Lodge yesterday. I told strangers in the restaurant to wait for me for dinner, I swam in the pool watching clouds and stars, I went back and forth to my bungalow in the dark, I snipped off something quite big, black and buggy off my semi-white trousers, so fast I didn’t have time to see what it was and moved on very quickly with my smartphone-torch rather than checking….., and then the evening ended most lovely, chatting to Sheery.
Thinking of John and Angelo who courageously are staying for 2 weeks but have to take a break in town on the weekend.
And as for me, feeling as clean as I haven’t since arrival, as I washed every part of my body in that wonderful bathroom of the Mekong Dolphin hotel veeeeery carefully today – I’ll now head back and to bed, as I do another tour tomorrow.
On the bus trip today, which was a fast-driving minibus, taking on a refrigerator and a box with a dog in it on the way, I liked best the girl that entered at one point and sat next to me. I really liked her. When I looked up vocabulary in my Lonely Planet out of boredom, she started looking, as the words were written in Khmer, too. And then we exchanged pronounciation. I loved that. And then I was kind of barbarian-travel-nervous again arriving in Kratie (first time I hadn’t booked a place before! Cheers to that, bucket list one less, and I might do it AGAIN, maybe…), so I entered tuktuk-negotiations, proudly using my knowledge of the number one after first offer of two (dollaaaahrs) – and then we took off and I forgot to say goodbye. Some of the best stuff doesn’t have photos to it, right.
Also without photo but hopefully emprinted in my memory for a long while to come where the monk with his yellow umbrella, walking down the street. Sa’ad (=gorgeous in Khmer, which I can only remember since it’s so close to English sad, which is funny).
And now off to bed. I think my laptop’s running out of electricity and my arms only have half a muscle ache, which is while I’ll be using them tomorrow, at least my legs get a rest. Mama, if you read this, yes I did take Arnica 😀 And I’m sure one ore more mosquitoes will find the right acupuncture spot to bite.