Hairy legs and bat sandwiches

We had a hectic start to 2011 and spent most of January in Cambodia, though posting this in April it already feels like light years ago. Our most vivid memories are trekking for three days including a 55km day trek, through a jungle where all the trees had spikes, swimming in three secret waterfalls, jumping off of 12 metre rocks into streams and eating delicacies such as tarantula, stick insect and bat to name but a few (well, Andy did and Alex filmed it):




We started in Siem Reap, in a hostel (my arse) recommended by our lovely friend Smeeta, who 'roughed it' here a couple of years earlier. How she survived the indoor heated pool, balcony, bar, pool tables and terrifying private cinema is beyond us. The town itself was touristy but very sweet, with some fantastic Khmer cuisine and the cheapest beer so far on our travels ($0.75 per pint). Outside the town we did the obligatory temple tour in Angkor, the most famous temple region in Cambodia. Ta Prohm was pretty eerie as the trees seemed to merge with the temple to create an awe inspiring sight.

The Bayon’ with four Buddhist faces watching every direction was also a great work of art. Angkor Wat was also very peaceful and calming and showed a great deal of work had gone into it. We were lucky enough (or lazy enough) to catch this temple at sunset rather than sunrise, and had it almost to ourselves, seeing it as it was meant to be - serene and quiet, rather than flashing with the bulbs of a thousand cameras.


After our intense temple tour we decided to relax our aching feet with the latest fad - a fish foot spa. Alex, having ticklish feet, found it a little trying:

We were also very fortunate whilst in Siem Reap to meet an Australian lady named Deborah on our flight into Cambodia. she was a strong willed, good hearted and enigmatic lady who was setting up a school for impoverished village children just outside Siem Reap. Needless to say, we got on very well and arranged to visit the school for a day. The day was fantastic and alllowed us a real insight into the lives of these children. They displayed a keeness to learn that was unlike what I had been used to. They also had developed motor skills that were unbelievable for their age. We had a brilliant time and the visit caused a great deal of thinking about future plans. Ultimately though, despite the temptation to 'do good', we thought that the best thing for Cambodia would actually be to leave it alone from western influences and allow it to develop naturally.

The existing village school, during an Art lesson:

From Siem Reap we took the bus down South to Phnom Penh, the capital, and stayed for a day to get our Laos visas. With only 24 hours there we did manage to see the creepy S21 museum and the Killing Fields, and were glad to leave after that. Then we were back on the bus up to Kratie with the intention of going to Ratanikiri in the North of Cambodia. However, fate struck as our bus overheated and as we stood baking by the hot roadside, it was clear that the bus was not going anywhere soon. Another bus pulled over after about ten minutes and we saw a few locals make the swap, so we looked at each other and quickly decided to take a punt. Three hours later we were in Mondulkiri ‘the wild east’ of Cambodia. It was a dusty windswept place more reminiscent of the Wild West, that did not see many visitors. After a well earned rest we set off the following day on what was to be our hardest trek to date.
On our first day we meet up with our guide, Hong, a local ‘Pnong’ tribesman who lived from the jungle and allowed us a fascinating and rewarding insight into a historic and sadly, dying way of life (can people be classified as endangered? If not they should). On our first day we walked 50k to his village, that’s right, 50k - believe it Ian! We were knackered and after 48km I turned to the third member of our group, a chain-smoking Irish weed addict named Martin who had brought nothing on the trek with him except a box of 200 ciggies and some hand santizer, and said, "I'm done" (or words to that effect) "what I would give for a cold beer." To our amazement, Hong invited us into a little dusty isolated hut just outside his village. It was an offie, and we probably bought more beer that night that they had sold in the last year. It was with great pleasure that we later were invited into Hong's home, built with his own hands from bamboo and elephant grass, containing only 2 wooden platforms and a fire, no chimney, and lots and lots of children and animals.

Hong's home:
Hong's family (mother-in-law in the foreground, with his wife and children behind):
Spending the night there was both disturbing and fascinating. We went to sleep with the entire family staring at us, and woke up with them still staring at us. Alex decamped in the morning to play with the kids, and got to know them a little. Pnong tradition is that girls are not given names at birth, and Hong's three daughters were thus known as 'Ian', 'Mian' and 'Nian' which roughly translates as 'First', 'Second' and 'Third'.

Hong's daughter Ian ('First'), a real sweety:
Next day we trekked through dense forest, stopping for lunch at a secret waterfall unvisited before by white people, where there was a cliff jump over the falls. Hong's safety briefing was, exactly that - brief. If we jumped, it seemed, a few feet too far left or not far enough out, we would die. Otherwise we were fine. As it turns out it was awesome fun.

That evening, we met Hong's 80 year old uncle whose name sounded like 'Pork Loin', who still thatched his own roof and walked two hours a day to fetch water. He had never eaten bread, drunk coffee or seen a white person before, despite being the oldest person we saw in Cambodia. He lived in a small house which he had built himself in the middle of the forest hours walk from any other humans. He grew vegetables to live from and a mountain of the harshest tobacco to smoke. He spoke a language called Hmong that has no written form, and had served as a latrine cleaner for the Khmer Rouge. He chose to live alone since his wife died, and meeting him was an amazing privilege - not only because of his way of life, but because he was probably one of the oldest survivors still living from the Khmer Rouge regime.

Pork Loin outside his home:

The last day of our trek we returned to Hong's village, stopping at a different waterfall. Our food had largely run out by now, but Hong didn't seem to worry. (Here Alex has taken over the script). No he didn't - as about half an hour away from the river we passed through a bamboo forest. Suddenly Hong stopped and listened, then showed us where some little bats had made their day-nest inside a wedge of bamboo. We could just see the little things through the small hole they had climbed in through. Hong seemed very excited and quickly whipping his knife out, chopped the bamboo off, leaving the segment which the bats were in, then stuffed the hole up with grass. He then said 'bat is my favourite'. I thought he meant animal. He didn't. What happened next I am still trying to forget, and forgive Andy for participating in. I did think of rescuing them, I really did, but Hong had a machete and I was a tad frightened that letting his lunch escape might anger him.

Hong 'preparing' lunch:
If anyone is curious as to how to prepare bat (by the way. it's Andy again), I'll let you in to a secret Pnong recipe:
1) Crush the bats skull between your thumb and forefinger
2) Skewer the remaining bat and roast it over a freshly made fire
3) Once crispy, (you will know this as the wings have been fully burnt away), remove bat from the heat.
4) Using a bamboo segment and a stick as a sort of pestle and mortar, crush the bats together with some jungle roots, (salt is optional).
5) Serve and enjoy!

Altogether it was an experience we will treasure, and never forget. At the time we didn't fully appreciate it, but we realise now we were very, very lucky to spend time with such a wonderful people who still live wholly reliant on nature - as close to Avatar as I think you could ever get.

Just to finish, Hong told us a wonderful story of how he had taken Gordon Ramsey to his village and showed him how to collect food from the jungle and how he prepared it - part of a forthcoming television show in the UK apparently though we can't remember what it is called. After the filming Ramsey offered to take Hong up in his Helicopter. Hong refused as he had no money to pay with, but after Ramsey explained it was a gift, he accepted and told us with bulging eyes how he had seen his jungle from the air - all the trees he knew, all the forest he lived in. It almost makes us cry typing it.

The rest of our trip up to the land crossing with Laos was largely uneventful and uncomfortable, but it did not matter as we had such great memories to take with us.