We’re leaving on a jet plane…….

3 March 2007

The reason for our epic journey to Sen Monorom which is tucked in the hills of Mondulkiri Province was quite simply – Elephants!

Elephant trekking was something we were both keen to do at somepoint on this trip and apart from the option for a short ride around Angkor Wat which we had not taken up it had eluded us. We had heard that Sen Monorom was one of the few places we could go Elephant trekking in Cambodia so we were quick to add the stop to our itinery…and we are glad we did!

Mondulkiri is known in Cambodia for its hills, tribes, jungle and waterfalls; the scenery was quite simply beautiful and worlds apart from that which we had seen of Cambodia to date.

In order to meet up with our Elephant we were taken to one of the minority villages of the area, where the Pnong people, who speak their own tribal language, live. The village was small consisting of about 8-10 houses which were unlike the traditional Khmer house which is built on stilts to combat the rainy season. Here, the houses were low to the ground and contained three families in each – we could not work out how the adults managed to get themselves any privaacy!. On oneside of the house was the sleeping area and the other was the kitchen. The house is also shared with pigs, ducks, dogs and chickens.

Shortly after our arrival we were introduced to our elephant, Nying Shal, who was colossal! At 50 years old Nying was positively middle aged as most of the elephants of the village live to about 100.

To board Nying we climbed up some steps and clambered across her head/neck into the bamboo basket on her back – sounds harsh but she didn’t flinch a muscle.

The next couple of hours were spent wandering slowly through the jungle taking in the various fruits growing, from cashew nuts to jack fruit which can weigh in at a massive 20kg per fruit!. After an hour our driver for the day hopped of his spot riding bareback on Nying’s head and gestured for Chris to take his place…..well Chris (who from this day forth shall be know to me as ‘The Elephant Man’) jumped at the chance and took pole position on Nying’s rather hairy head!

Now I don’t know why we were surprise, judging by the size on Nying, but Elephants sure can eat! Every few paces Nying set about devouring anything that was in her path (or to the side of it!). Our guide was telling us that Nying like pineapple plant and bamboo plant but it soon became apparent that Nying just simply likes to eat! But I am not sure Nying liked to chew her food perhaps as well as she should because boy did she suffer from flatulence afterwards!

Watching her use her trunk to grasp food and through water over herself (and us) to cool off was definately my highlight of the day!

Before we reached our lunch stop Chris and I swapped places at the helm (so technically that would make me ‘Elephant Woman’ but I will not hear that spoken OK!) and I enjoyed the view from above.

We stopped by a lovely little waterfall for a swim and some lunch and the elephants were set free to rome on their own. The Pnong people do not feed the elephant they prefer to let them wander and fend for themselves. In order that they can relocate the animals they simply attach a long chain (not heavy) to the elephant which makes tracks which they then follow.

Before we made our way back to the village we watched Nying take a bath in the stream.

We were both completely in awe of Nying the whole day, partly because we were relying on her to be well tempered, but mainly because she was a fantastic and beautiful animal with a healthy appetite – the latter being something we can both relate to!

21st January 2007

We arrived in Townsville on Thursday 18th January. Our reason for visiting on our way to Cairns was to dive the Yongala wreck. We had heard lots of positive stories about the dive, although perhaps the most convincing argumet to do it was put forward by Dan, who simply told us when we left Sydney, ‘dive the Yongala or I will kill you!’

The Yongala was sunk during a cyclone in 1911, 89kms off the coast of Townsville, with the loss of 124 lives. It lay on the sandy ocean floor in 30m of water until it was discovered in 1958. The wreck is in the open ocean, but has developed into a semi man made coral reef, as the ship has become completely covered in soft and hard corals. The wreck also provides shelter from the strong currents in the area, and has become a haven for all sorts of marine life. As such, the dive is listed as the number one dive in Australia, the number one wreck dive in the world, and in the top ten of all dive sites across the planet!

Unfortunatley we presumed that trips would go out to the wreck every day from Townsville. This was mistake number one. We had missed a trip the previous day, and the next boat wasn’t going out until Saturday. We needed to get to Cairns by Sunday, but decided it would be worth hanging around for, so put our name down for the Saturday trip.

You would expect that killing a few days in the second largest city in Queensland would be easy, mistake number 2! There is absolutley nothing to do in Townsville! Whilst we have been away we have come up with a new scale for measuring how vibrant a nightlife a city has, it is a simple relationship that states that ‘the quality of nightlife is inversley proportional to the number of nights you spend at the cinema.’ Until now Invecargil on the South Island of New Zealand held the record for a one night stop over, and one night at the cinema. Townsville laughed in the face of Invercargil and we spent 2 of the 3 nights we had there couped up in the cinema (it would have been 3 out of 3 but for a lack of funds!).

We did take a day trip out to Magnetic Island off the coast of Townsville, which was a nice place and also home to the largest Koala colony in Oz. We took in a walk through the rain forrest that covers the island, and even saw our first venomous snake, a brown snake (the tenth deadliest in the world!).

Saturday eventually came round, and we were picked up at 5.30am outside our digs by Adrenalin Dive. We headed off to get kitted up and boarded our boat along with about 12 others to make our way out to the dive site. Until now all our diving has been done either from the shore or on shallow coral reefs, so heading out for 4 hours into the ocean on a small boat was a new experience, and the thought of jumping into the water, at such an exposed site was beginning to make us both a little nervous!

However, nerves about the dive were soon completely forgotten, as the sea sickness kicked in! Charlotte has suffered sea sickness before, and true to form was first to make use of one of the numerous buckets supplied on board. However, it was only a little while longer before everyone on the boat had their heads overboard, me included, donating our breakfast to the fish! Not the best preparation for days diving!

When we eventually arrived, we were given our brief by the dive master, which included the fact that there are 3 big bull sharks (these are man eaters!) that are commonly seen around the wreck. Rather than giving us harpoon guns to defend ourselves we were told that if we saw them, simply ‘don’t panic, they rarely show interest in the divers!’ We were also briefed about the strong currents, that, if you loose grip of the guide rope during the decent can take you miles further out to sea before you know it. The currents at this particular site have claimed lives of inexperienced divers before, great when you consider this was our first dive since qualifying as open water divers!

Once in the water we began our decent down the guide lines. Going down to a wreck is a strange experience, as you decend you pass through a strange stage where you can no longer see the surface, and can’t yet see the wreck below. Bizzarely it induces a kind of vertigo feeling, and as this dive was deeper than we had ever gone before (and were technically qualified to go to!) this stage lasted longer than expected. However once the wreck came into view it all became worthwhile!

The Yongala itself has a really spooky feel to it, however, as the dive master had warned us before entry, it is the size and number of fish on view that can become overwhelming. He was not wrong! There were litterally ‘clouds’ of small fish, that engulfed you reducing visibility down from the actual 10m to no more than 1m, it was crazy! Add to this schools of Barracuda and Giant Trevally, that would often dart into the clouds of little fish for a feed and this was absolutely another world experience!

We also saw massive loggerhead turtles, loads of sea snakes and huge Batfish. Glancing out away from the wreck gave glimpses of some huge shadows, but thankfully the bull sharks didn’t turn up for our dive! One of the group did see a grey nurse shark but unfortunaltey we missed it! The highlight of the dive though was definitley the Queensland Groupers! These fish are enourmous, one even has his own nickmname, VW, because he is thought to be the same size as the famous beatle car! We saw this fella towards the end of our dive, just sat under the hull of the boat. It is estimated he is 2.5m long and weighs 800lbs, when I saw it for some strange reason I thought it was a couch that had fallen out of the boat (maybe this was the mind bending nitrogen narcosis kicking in!).

We did 2 dives in total on the wreck before heading back to the safety of dry land. It was an incredible experience, but boy did you have to earn it! 8 hours round trip on a dive boat in those conditions needed to deliver something spectacular, and it certainly didn’t dissapoint!

Note: These Photos are not our own but taken from Google Images to provide an idea of what the dive was like!

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