We arrived in Sen Monorom and took the advice of one of Vilde's friends and stayed at a place called the Nature Lodge. It was pretty awesome. Everyone had their own private bungalow complete with small balcony and an outdoor bathroom with hot water. And a benefit here, they are even working on being 100% sustainable. Since the place was located far out of town, we decided to take it easy after the long trip. That consisted of taking naps until dinnertime. Since the lodge is about 1 kilometer out of town, we ate most of the time at their restaurant, which was pretty good food so the bit of extra money was worth the convenience and the taste of the food. The next day we decided we would go looking for waterfalls and sleep in since we had traveled so far the day before.
We quickly learned that a self-sufficient lodge with farm animals do not care about sleeping in, so we were both up around 7 or 7:30. We ate breakfast and headed to the closest of the falls, Monorom falls, only 1.5 kilometers out of the town center. A quick side note about the town itself. It reminded me a lot of home. It was small, but just big enough to solve any problems you needed with no excess. We made our way out of town on the red dusty dirt roads. When we arrived I was surprised to find that there was no one there except for a family that hoped to sell snacks to visitors. We started walking around and taking pictures and all the usual stuff. It was getting hot and we wanted to go for a swim, but the water looked a little too dirty for comfort, so we decided to wait for later at a bigger waterfall. We climbed around for awhile, and of course my camera ran out of battery so I got angry, and we changed our plan a little bit. We headed back to the lodge for some lunch and a chance to charge my camera.
After lunch the sky started to get a bit darker, but we decided to head out of town anyway to see Bou Sraa waterfall, which is known around the country for its beauty and double drop falls. The road there was even worse than any we had come accross. Parts of it were paved, not well, but paved nonetheless. The rest of the road was part red clay, some gravel, and the rest a combination of all three. We got about 23 out of 33 kilometers there, and the sky started to look much darker and angrier. We probably egged each other on subconsciously but we decided to continue on anyway. As we got to the falls and paid the dollar entry fee, the rain started to fall. We went down to the falls since we were already there, and thought we might be able to wait out the rain a little bit. After taking some photos of the falls and trying to stay as dry as possible, we decided the rain wasn't going to let up anytime soon, so we turned the bikes back on and started the long and arduous journey back to the lodge. We hoped. The whole time I couldn't help but hear the echo of Erin's warning, "Do NOT ride in the rain." Going at a regular pace, the trip should have taken us no more than 45 minutes. It took nearly 2 hours. The rain continued to pour, and the roads got worse. The only thing we could do was ride along the puddles that had formed in the tire treads of the cars already gone by. The worst part, we got to the bridge to cross to the final road to the lodge, only a half kilometer from safety. I went on the bridge fine, but I saw mud on the other side, and for whatever reason, my brain panicked and I knew I had no choice but to bail. I sustained no injuries aside from that of my ego, but the bike had the blinkers on the left hand side ripped off, and the front disk brake got a bit skewed (which is getting fixed at this very moment). After a terrible two hours on the road, we got back to the lodge, and had no hope of warming up after cruising through the cold rain, even with hot showers. Thankful that we had not succumbed to hypothermia, we ate some dinner and went to bed knowing that tomorrow would be better. We had booked a day trek on the back of an elephant.
We got up early, had our usual egg, fruit and bread breakfast and waited for our transport to the elephants and the trails. We hopped in the back of a truck with some French families, and were on our way. Much to my dismay, we were back on the terrible road we had to traverse on the motos just the day before. Luckily we only went part of the way. We got out of the truck and saw an elephant having its breakfast outside of a house. It was smaller than what I expected, but it was still huge. I started laughing when I saw the elephants head because I did not think they actually had a tuft of hair. Ever since seeing the Jungle Book I thought that they exaggerated the hair on their heads, but no, they have a pretty full head of hair. We quickly learned that we would be one elephant short for the day. Why? During the night, one of the elephants had uprooted its chain and run off into the jungle. That meant one less for the French families. Suddenly two elephants came charging out of the jungle with an 8 year old perched on top of each one. One of the guys told us that yesterday was a wedding, and since there was a union of two families, they now had to wed the elephants before they could leave. The little kids took them off to the other end of the street where they went through a quick ceremony, and apparently drank some alcohol...
After some time, they put some baskets on the elephants backs and we climbed up a rickety ladder to get on top. After cramming ourselves into the little basket, we headed down the road for a trail. And who was our driver? One of the little kids, who most of the time got board and was singing most of the time as well as trying to find the most comfortable position to ride on the elephants neck. We spent about one and a half to two hours on the elephants hiking through the jungle. Ours seemed to be the most stubborn. She would often stop to find something to eat, then run to catch up to the rest of the group. If she managed to get into the middle of the pack, and one fell back she would stop and wait to make sure the last elephant wasn't lost or too far behind. She would make her own paths instead of taking the already made ones. She would stop in rivers and cool off by spraying herself and us with water. Every time she did something she wasn't supposed to, the little boy would try to grunt with a deep voice but it didn't really work since he was so young.
After we couldn't take the pain of the wooden seat any longer, we stopped for lunch and a swimming break. We ended up staying at this stream and small waterfall for about three or four hours. All we really did was hang out, swim, play in the water and before we left we helped bathe the elephants. The walked into the water just about up to their eyes. When they were done, I swam to where I could stand up and then the elephant started walking out of the water, and it just kept getting taller and taller, it didn't seem possible that an animal that huge could hide its body under that small amount of water. We hopped back on the elephants and made our way back through the jungle to go back to the lodge. We finally got back and again we were exhausted and ate dinner, had a drink and went to bed. Before all the 5 year old French kids.
We decided to stay one more day in Sen Monorom so I could try to find someone to fix my blinker as well as the welding of the seat-back on my bike. That was the easy part. I had the same thing fixed in Phnom Penh which cost 4 dollars, and the guy did a crappy job. In Sen Monorom, the guy did a much better job and even reinforced it with more pieces of metal (that he found on the floor of the shop) and it only cost two dollars. Now the hard part, finding replacement blinkers. I went to every mechanic I could find in town, but none of them had the part I was looking for. I'm not surprised because the bike is more common in Vietnam and parts in Cambodia are hard to come across. I made the decision to not get them fixed, but it was ok since the side they broke off was my free hand so I could signal to turn with that hand. And since it was mostly highway driving, I wasn't planning on making right hand turns anyway. We spent the rest of the day at the lodge relaxing, reading and enjoying the peace and quiet.
The next day we loaded the bikes back up and parked them outside the lodge since they were outside our bungalow the whole time. We ate our breakfast and prepared to leave. Of course though, my bike didn't start. The worst part about it, the only mechanic was about 1 kilometer away, but luckily we were on top of a hill. I had to do something I had never done, and still didn't really understand the concept of: try to start the bike by pushing it and popping it into gear. It had never been really described to me, but I held in the clutch and someone lent a helping hand to push me down the hill. After what I thought was more than enough energy to start the sleepy engine, I put it in first and let go of the clutch. To my great surprise, it worked! I was also going too fast for first, so once the engine started and I realized what was happening, I lurched forward, but barely got it into second gear.
I got to the mechanic who I saw yesterday with the hopes that he could help. It being so far away from the usual tourist track, he didn't speak a word of English. I had to mimic the motion of charging the battery, since there wasn't a single noise when I tried to start the engine and the spark plug was brand new, and it started once I went down the hill. I knew it had to be the battery. I showed him and he started to tinker. I saw that he had ripped out a wire, so I got nervous and walked under a tree since the heat of 8 o'clock in the morning coupled with the stress was too much to bear. After about ten minutes, he started it up just fine. He pulled up a part of the batter that I recognized, but I still don't know what its called. He managed to convey to me that it was bad, and that I owed him a whole four dollars for the part. With everything ready to go, and the bikes in seemingly good condition for a ride, we were back on the road west to Kampong Cham.
And that's where we are now. We realized that we are way ahead of our tentative schedule and that we were still in pain from sitting on top of the elephant, along with the six hour ride back to Kampong Cham, so we are here for an extra day. Tomorrow we are back on the road and this time we are going to be in Siem Reap. The combination party town with the temples of Angkor Wat just outside the city. That should take us just about as long as Mondulkiri, so the next post will probably be about the temples and Siem Reap, all given that the bikes work properly and they let us get there.
Sunrise in Kampong Cham
The top of Monorom Falls
Bou Sraa Falls
Our Tiny Driver
Bath time
No comments:
Post a Comment