Mar 02 - We woke up to birdsong - no roosters, which was a relief! We were in US Military-style hammocks, which have a built-in mosquito net. They're actually a really clever design, and fairly comfortable - these hammocks said "Made in USA", but their instructions included: "Make sure this lif-jaket is attached to bodis before use. Do not sit on!", so I guess they were local knock-offs, with the wrong pattern transcribed. I looked up through the netting, and saw my first animal life of the trek - a pair of squirrels scampering around in the branches above us. We struck camp and had a quick breakfast (beef with noodles!) before setting off again.

The hiking was much like the day before - bits of beautiful scenery combined with clambering over burnt-out stumps. We'd headed north the previous day, and now set off in a kind of south easterly direction - circling back in the general direction of the village. The rivers were wider here, and we had to ford a couple more - luckily with no more falling-down episodes. We stopped at a beautiful spot for a drink of water at about ten 'o'clock. We sat down in a clearing at the edge of a river, just in front of a set of rapids. There we leafy overhangs on either side, and everything looked green and peaceful. "Oh," said Cheryl, "Is that a snake?" We couldn't believe it, but a six foot snake was lazily swimming downstream - going at quite a pace, because of the current. It lifted up its head, and carried out an amazing surfing manoevure through the rapids - wriggling its body to steer a path through. It keeled away to the bank and disappeared under a log. After drawing some pictures with our guide, we think we established that it was a cobra - as he nodded vigorously when we drew a hooded snake - probably the one that had been laying all of Srau's delicious breakfast snacks upstream.

We watched life and the river stream by for a bit, and then crossed the rapids to carry on - keeping a fresh eye out for any serpentine surfers! This was a fairly beautiful bit of the forest, and we saw really prolific insect life - butterflies seeming to swarm in particular spots over a tasty morsel, and hundred of moths, crickets and stick insects. Srau pointed out what looked like a white fungus on the stem of a plant, near the side of the path. It was a fluffy mass encircling the whole plant - with little white tendrils blowing in the breeze. As we moved closer - the mass scatttered, and resolved itself into hundreds of little insects - each one looking like a freshly bleached knot of cotton. Amazing to look at - see the Facebook photo album for pictures! We also came across lots of beautiful plant life - mainly wierd varieties of orchids, gingers and lillies. We managed to get across to the guide that he didn't have to chop them all out, which was great.

We walked upstream a bit further, in and out of cleared patches, and finally came to a waterfall. This was a beautiful spot - the main bridge of the falls are about 20 metres wide, with a drop of about 4-5 metres. There's a fair amount of water, considering that it's the dry season, and it falls into a huge oval pool which is about 20 metres wide and 10 metres across. There are a heap of big dead tree trunks which have crashed precariously over the falls - I guess they'll be washed further downstream in the next rains. We swam around for about an hour, trying not to think too much about what was in the water - earlier that morning, we'd seen a distinctly human-looking poo balanced neatly on a rock in the middle of the river. After a bit of loafing in the sun (we'd walked a long way that morning) we had lunch - surprise, surprise; beef with noodles!

Just after we'd finished, a large Khmer family came down to the falls. They didn't speak English, so we didn't understand the conversation with our guide, but basically I think they were rushing us along. They were dressed pristinely, a marked contrast to ourselves - we were starting to look a little grubby on our third day, and this was another reminder that we weren't as far into the jungle as we'd maybe expected to be! We must have been fairly close to a driveable road, as none of them looked as if they'd come by moto. As we left, we saw them tearing the boxes off some bottles of brandy and flinging the litter down on the ground - suddenly the spot didn't look quite as idyllic.

A couple more hours walking (up and down some pretty steep hills) and we arrived at our spot for the night. This stretch of river was probably the best we'd seen in terms of birdlife, and we saw kingfishers (Pygmy & Malachite), hoopoes, hornbills, eagles, sparrowhawks, and even an owl. Our camping spot was again on the verge of some cleared land, but the river was scenic, with some nice pools. Having said that - we were pretty sick of walking around stumped land and scrambling over burning logs - we weren't sure if we'd been sent to a dud spot, or if (as it appeared) the Cambodians were actually trying to see in 2008 by burning down their entire country, and we planned to ask Tree about it when we got back to the lodge.

We'd made camp and started cooking, when a family trooped up from their downstream hut to see us. We hadn't noticed it when we walked in, but they were only a couple of hundred metres away, and they were obviously friends of our guide - I guess that's why he picked that spot. The father sat down in the middle of camp - ripped open a pack of cigarettes, and chucked the wrapper on the floor before talking animatedly to our guide. I wish we'd know what they were talking about - but there was no English on their side, and clearly we didn't speak any Pnong. There were also five kids (the oldest of which looked about six), all conscripted into what looked like a family thatch collection operation. They actually didn't look healthly - all of them had slightly distended bellies, and definitely not from eating too much. They also looked slightly dull and tired. We shared out our food (beef with noodles and rice again!) The beef was starting to taste pretty high by then, as it had been in the back of a sweaty backpack, wrapped in clingwrap, for over three days now! Srau just cooked it a bit moore each day. Having said that, we foreigners managed it OK, so I'm sure it was alright for the kids. We got set for another early night, and as we climbed into our hammocks, Srau disappeared off - judging by the volume, to have a few beers with his mate.

We'd fallen asleep, when suddenly we were awoken by flashes of torchlight and conversation. We turned on our head-torch, and saw the whole family (including the baby, which had to be carried) walking up and down in the river. They were combing the river banks - looking for frogs, snakes and any other dietary supplements, and we eventually went back to sleep, reflecting again that life's pretty hard for these people, and also that it's not going to get any easier.