Mar 03 - So Friday was the day we set off on our trek through the jungles of Mondulkiri. We woke up for a quick breakfast at Phnom Meas, and met up with Rainer, Zelia and Baptiste. The hotel manager, Mr Tree, was a little late, so we had to play a quick game of charades to get our orders in, as no-one else at the guest house speaks much English. Tree rocked up at about eightish; we packed our trekking gear into the tuk-tuk and said goodbye to Rainer, who was staying behind. Rainer had a parting gift for us - some water purification tablets, which we were grateful for later on in the trek. We set off with Tree for a local Phnong village to meet our guides. I guess we should have known from the volume of his mobile phone calls that something was up, but more about that later!

One the way, we dropped off the English girls from Gloucester, who were out for a month to see Cambodia. They were having an overnight elephant trek to a local waterfall, and we stopped for a bit at the village where they were catching their rides. Only one of their elephants had rocked up, and Tree gave us a bit of background on the villagers as we waited.

The Phnong are the main local minority in Mondulkiri, and they live pretty much a subsitence-based lifestyle. Hondas have replaced elephants as their primary means of transport, apart from walking, but they mainly live off the land - carrying out hunter-gathering, logging, and a bit of farming - as well as providing guide services for tourists. As land becomes generally more valuable in Cambodia, they've also started selling off bits of their tribal areas to local Khmer families. Almost all the families we saw had in the region of ten children; their population is growing hugely, in conjunction with a squeeze on the available land and forest - so it seems life will have to change pretty drastically for them in the near future.

The elephants used for trekking are owned by a few of the village's wealthy families. They only have 12 today, although once there were more than thirty, and each animal gets handed down the family, like a working heirloom of sorts. Some elephants had been there for so many generations that their current owners had no idea of their actual age - one old cow was reported to be ninety years old! There's apparently some tribal taboo against letting the captive elephants breed, and if it does happen, the owners need to sacrifice a whole heap of other domestic animals in a big appeasment ritual, which the whole village attends (and of course they get to eat the sacrifices!). "So now," said Tree, "they don't let the elephants have any babies - too expensive to sacrifice all those other animals, and if anything goes wrong, the owners get blamed by the village." There was a bit of silence, and then Tracey, one of the Gloucester girls, asked the question that everyone had been thinking; "Err... so how do you actually stop an elephant having a baby?" "No problem," said Tree, with a grin, "When the male starts to get in the mood, you can tell - his eyes start to leak. Then you tie him to a tree with no food! Not for a week! Then he gets less power, and gives up... othewise he starts to get angry, and could even kill people in the village." Seems a bit harsh on the bull elephant maybe, but there you go. I guess horny, rampaging bulls and maintaining the transport monopoly were probably the real reasons for the drastic birth control measures in the first place!

Tree then asked if we'd like to see a local Pnong house, which are sort of woven together of reeds and bits of wood. He kicked open the door, and we followed him inside. It was a bit of a surprise to see someone still asleep in bed, but he sort of rolled over and went back to sleep. It's not the first time I've thought this type of tribal tourism in Asia is wierd - it's almost as if these villages get treated as a type of zoo, with a steady stream of people coming in to pore over their behaviour; not really my cup of tea. After looking around the village a bit more, Cheryl, Zelia, Baptiste & I got back in the tuk-tuk to head to the start of our trek. We left the Gloucester girls behind with their first elephant - a sad looking old cow with a howdah already strapped to her back, and no sign yet of the second, although their crick-necked wine-loving guide had turned up.

A few kilometers down the road, we arrived at our departure point. There was another elephant tethered outside a hut, and Tree jumped out of the tuk-tuk, shouting. This was apparently the second ride for the girls from Gloucester, and there'd been some crossed wires as to where to go. In a few minutes they had it mounted up and it shambled off into the distance, moving freakishly quickly, considering the relaxed gait.

Our guides hadn't shown up yet, and from the shouting going on in the village, there was clearly some problem. After about fifteen minutes, one likely looking person (Thong) appeared. We still needed another guide, as Cheryl and I were going for three nights, but Zelia and Baptiste were coming back the following day. We hung around some more, and eventually a slighly sorry-looking chap on a moto turned up; obviously still pissed from the night before. There was a bit of an altercation between him and Tree - apprently there's no face-loss problem with losing your temper in the Pnong culture - and he then drove off again. Tree came over; "I don't understand! These people. He says he's busy now, doesn't want to go. He says he doesn't want my money - he's just sold some land and he's got enough." Just as we'd resolved to cut our trip down to one night, he lurched back into the village, negotiated a few more bucks from Tree, and then agreed to come along. We weren't ecstatic about leaving with the prima donna, as he'd be our guide for the three night trek, but Tree persuaded us that he was great. He also told us that the guy's English was pretty good, although we then established, about ten minutes into the walk, that he didn't speak any at all! I think his name was Srau, but to be honest, it could have been anything.

After trekking out of the village for a couple of kilometers, we did get to some beautiful jungle. The trees were towering, covering us with a deep green canopy, and vines draped to the ground like something out of a Tarzan movie. We had to ford a couple of rivers on the way, and crossed one of them by tightrope-walking a log which had fallen across the banks, something like three meters above the water's surface. That doesn't sound like much, but it's pretty hair-raising when you've got a 12-kilo backpack raising your center of gravity. Anyway, we made it across, and had some pretty steep climbs and descents before coming to a beautiful natural set of rock pools - our lunch spot of the day. Srau had a few moments of weakness on the way - obviously his hangover was starting to kick in. Once there, our guides didn't waste any time in whipping out their fishing nets - anything that moves is fair game in this part of Mondulkiri, and in half an hour, they'd caught a few tiny fish to supplement their own lunch. I asked them if they ever caught anything bigger (the biggest of the day was about 4cm), but Thong said no - if you leave a small fish to grow big, someone else will come and catch it first! We swam in the pools for an hour or so - one of which was a brilliant natural jacuzzi, and then came out to a delicious lunch of fried rice and beef, which Thong has whipped up out of his backpack. It was great to have some more time catching up with Baptiste and Zilia, as well.

After lunch, we trekked through the jungle to a waterfall; as we approached the spot, Srau leapt up into a clump of bamboo. It was like something out of 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' - the bamboo was about 6 meters tall, and in a few seconds he was halfway up, using the grassy spurs of each segment as footholds. He pulled out his machete, and started hacking at a section of bamboo. We had no idea what was happening, and then suddenly a bat came flying out of the clutch (it had hollowed a cave into one of the segments). Srau leaped on it, broke its wings, and stuffed it in his pocket, with an enormous smile on his face. Amazing that he spotted it from down there, but I really hoped this wasn't what we'd be having for dinner. Slightly stunned, we carried on to the waterfall, which was pretty. While we looked around, the guides used sticks to try and roust some more bats from their roosts in the sandstone overhangs, and then catch them in a net which they'd stashed at the site. The bats were too quick for them today, through - and they had to make do with just the one.

Thong told us we'd be staying at a farm that night, which was news to us - we'd been planning on overnighting in the jungle. We walked out of the thick forest, and into areas of land which had been heavily cleared - in some cases for farming, in others just to claim the land. There's apparently a big push at the moment to keep as much jungle and uncleared forest as possible within the National Park framework; perversely, the locals are now cutting down every tree in sight, with the view that if the land's bare, the government won't want it for parkland any longer. There were a whole range of plantations - bananas, cashews, and also some vegetable crops It was kind of interesting, but not really what we'd come to Mondulkiri to see. At about five-ish, we stopped at a farm, obviously belonging to Pnong friends of the guides. They didn't really introduce us to the family - just pointed to a hut, and said that's where we'd be sleeping for the night.

There was a river running next to the farm, and we walked down to wash the dust off, and to chat some more to Baptiste and Zilia. The family's kids came trooping out to gawk at us ... there were ten of them, all under the age of 11 - and the mother was pregnant with the next one. We didn't ask her age, it seemed awkward, but later found out that it's not unusual for Pnong girls to marry at the age of 14, so she may well have been as young as 25! The kids played in a great, laughing pack, with the eldest making sure that the youngest were taken care of. They joked around in the river for an hour, as our guides prepared the food, and then we went back up to the house for dinner.

I hadn't had a good look at the house before, but effectively it was a windowless wooden shack with two rooms - a general purpose living/sleeping area (with a fire in the middle!) and a kitchen with an open door for ventilation. At about this point it dawned on me that we were all going to be sleeping in the same room. I wasn't quite sure how we'd fit, as the kitchen wasn't big enough for all of us - we ate in there with our guides and the father of the family, while the kids ate outside with Mum. We had another crack at the fried rice & beef (which would become a recurring them over the next few days!) and then Thong brought out a stash of rice wine. It tasted sort of like a not-too-toxic Grappa, and we all had to knock back shots of it, until the bottle was finished.

After dinner we shared out the bisuits we'd brought with the kids, and retired to the sleeping room, where we'd set up our hammocks. It was a very weird night. God knows where everyone fitted, as the room was about 5x5m, but we had the four barangs (foreigners), two guides, two parents, ten kids, and the parent's friend. No electricity made for an early night, although the blokes snuck out for some more wine, and then came back loud and locquatious for a couple of hours. There was talking, snoring and farting all night, and the new baby (no nappies!) also filled the room with a pretty heavy aroma. To add to it, they closed the door and stoked up the fire, and I slipped off to sleep in a sort of Carbon Monoxide-induced haze.