Virachey National Park Trekking
Early in the next morning in Ban Lung after meeting Joonas, we all meet up at the park office to pay our fees, list our next of kin and insurance info, and meet the guide. We also met a fourth trekker, Danial from Switzerland. Also with us is Catherine from the UK. The guide then goes off to buy food for three days and we wait around for him to return.
Next up was a sixty kilometer ride on motor scooters. Helmets were provided, but they were half helmets and masks were not provided. Arriving in the town of Taveng dusty, a bit sore, but mostly dusty and dirty. Here we waited for about two hours for the boats to arrive. While waiting I observed a man bailing water out of his completely submerged, red canoe with a three gallon bucket while a little boy tried to help with his half liter water bottle. I said to myself, “gee, I hope that’s not one of our boats.” Well, it was.
Finally the other boat arrived and we all packed in, Danial and I in the leaky one, for the trip up a tributary of the Se San River. I kept my ears plugged most of the time with my fingers as the motor was rather loud and I’m going deaf anyways. Along the way we passed dirt steps cut out of the river bank leading to little wooden houses here and there. We also passed men, women, but mostly children along the river bank and in the river. I waved, but got no reply. Their expressions were inquisitive, but defensively so. The place felt very wild.
A few hours later and after a mechanical mishap where the wooden motor support broke and was nailed back in using a pair of needle nose pliers, we arrived at the village on the river bank. Here an old woman and two or three young girls were washing in the river. They also looked at us quite defensively and left. We then followed the guide up the trail and past this little, rickety fence that spanned all of three feet on either side of the gate.
The village itself consisted of about seven wooden building on stilts of which our “cabin” was by far the most robustly built. Our cabin also happened to be smack dab in the middle of the village. Our guide said that they had wanted to place the cabin on the edge of the village, near the river, but the villagers wouldn’t allow it there, saying that there was a ghost in that area. There were many children walking about and playing, and they all stared at us, but none ever waved back or tried to talk to us, not even when I spoke Khmer to them. A few women were around, but there weren’t any men there that day.
Pretty hot and sweaty, we all headed to the river for a swim. It was quite refreshing in the heat and there were many colorful butterflies fluttering around on the bank. The river here actually got fairly deep for this time of year, up to chest height only twenty feet from the bank. Most places on river/creek are only two feet deep or so. Afterwards we had dinner, cooked by our guide and consisting of rice and a little stir fry with sardines. In the elevated cabin we slept in hammocks printed in US army camouflage with English lettering and many typos.
The next morning we had breakfast consisting of rice and sardines again. There were about four men outside by the open cooking fire with our guide. We were introduced to the village chief and that accounted for our villagers interaction. We then headed back to the wooden canoes with our guide, two boat drivers, and one man from the village who would be our local guide and porter. He carried all of the cans of sardines and several bottles of boiled water. This water was boiled in the same pot as our rice and turned out to be pretty foul tasting, a mixture of rice and heavy smoke.
A short ride later we got dropped off and started our trek in the national park. We would pass these white, mottled, tall trees fairly often and they were the largest and tallest in the area. We happened on one that was a good six to eight feet in diameter and was fairly tall. We also passed around and under a lot of bamboo which, interestingly enough, appears to grow in clumps of about five feet in diameter at the base with the tops flowering out to all sides, sometimes connecting with others to form a canopy of criss crossing bamboo.
We passed some other large trees with a wedge cut into the trunk about two feet wide and obviously burnt in that area. Our guide stated that the villagers do this to cause the tree to excrete resin, which gets collected and is used as lamp fuel. At one point we heard some loud trumpeting and I thought it might have been a wild elephant. But our native guide said it was a deer. We finally ended up at a small pond for lunch, yep, rice and sardines.
At this break spot a medium sized dog showed up and left. Then a puppy of the same coloring showed up and just hung out with us. It seemed to obey our native guide more or less, so the joke was that we had just walked around in a big circle and the village was right around the corner. Too bad my GPS didn’t work to track our route. The puppy would accompany us for the rest of the trip, always underfoot.
After lunch we walked along the Ho Chi Minh trail and up to a pile of rusted machine guns. They looked very old, more like WWII or WWI era than Vietnam War era. There was about four or five larger machine guns, the size of the M2 Browning .50 caliber and a couple of smaller ones. All were piled together in one spot. I picked up one of the smaller ones and immediately one of the bipods broke off. We all took turns posing with it.
Then it was a head down trek to our camp site, next to a creek. It was very hot and humid, and we bathed in the shallow creek which was only two or three inches deep. Dinner by candlelight was of course, rice and sardines. At this point I was getting kind of annoyed at all the rice, but not as much as the others.
The bees here were also quite thick. Usually I let bees alone or just shoo them off. But annoyed at being constantly pestered by these bees and smaller flies I smacked one hard. Usually this stuns it enough that it doesn’t sting me or kills it outright. But not these Khmer bees. With its last breath it stung me, the first time I’ve been stung in a decade. That night I killed about eight and got stung four times. I hit one so hard on my left thumb that my thumb throbbed for ten minutes afterwards. But I don’t think that one stung me.
The next morning we hiked for a few hours after rice and sardines to meet up with the boats again. Along the way we saw a pretty snake with iridescent coloring. Ants were all of the place also. There were some large trees with red flowers and a few other flowering plants. We also went to a small hill that afforded a view of the surrounding jungle that seemed to stretch forever.
After lunch it was back on the boats to drop off our native guide and the puppy, then on to Ta Veng for our sixty kilometer dust ride back to Ban Lung. We were completely covered in red dirt and dust and Danial the Swiss looked at his once light colored shirt and said “this will never be clean again.” I had to agree at the possibility. I’m not going to even try to have it washed here, but just bagged everything until I can get to a proper washing machine with proper washing detergent.
Overall it was good to see the wildest areas of the country where few have gone. I was disappointed at the lack of guidance by our “guide,” but not as disappointed at not finding wild mango trees, banana trees, and coconuts. There actually were not even an coconut or palm trees except for around people’s homes where they were planted.
The only other thing I did was to rent a bicycle to ride out to the “crater” lake five kilometers away. It was nice and clean, but it was overcast that day and the ride out covered me in dust and dirt. I also found the cashew trees, they were everywhere. I picked one off the road and tried to open it up, only to find that it was very oily and soft inside. Perhaps you have to dry them first or this one was not yet ripe. They also had them at the market at fifty cents a kilo, but again, all raw and shelled. And I didn’t even have to borrow money from Joonas, getting to Phnom Penh the next day with three whole dollars left, but very hungry.
