SAMLOT, MINE CAPITAL OF THE WORLDAndy Brouwer's Cambodia Tales
Former Khmer Rouge Zones in Battambang Province
Ray Zepp, a teacher who has travelled to the far corners of the globe, published the first edition of his Cambodia Less Traveled guidebook in 1996. The book gives the reader an insight into the 'other' Cambodia, not usually found in the glossy guidebooks and is a treasure trove of anecdotes and experiences in many off the beaten track locations throughout Cambodia. Zepp, now back in Cambodia after a spell living in Micronesia, has also published the fascinating A Field Guide to Cambodian Pagodas and earlier last year, A Field Guide to the Pagodas of Siem Reap. Ray tells me he's hoping to publish a new book, Around Battambang, in the next few months. My thanks to Ray for permission to post this insight into his early 2001 experiences in northwest Cambodia:-
I'm now teaching English in Battambang for COERR (Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees), an organization known for its work in the refugee camps, especially Site Two, back in the eighties. I'll probably stay here for another year, or maybe more. But with the opening up of Cambodia, it appears that the possibilities are limitless. I have recently been spending some time in the former Khmer Rouge zones around Battambang.
The phrase ‘Khmer Rouge zones' usually brings to mind the names Pailin (current home of Ieng Sary, et al), and Anlong Veng (final holdout of Pol Pot and Ta Mok). Those names are known for high profile leaders and important events, but there are many other areas in northwest Cambodia that were under the control of the Khmer Rouge for as many as 30 years. Some were constantly at war, while others enjoyed relative peace and security, if indeed such words have any meaning in Khmer Rouge history. The former Khmer Rouge territories are quite a mixed bag today. Some are quite prosperous by Cambodian standards, while others are mired in poverty. Some are very remote and difficult to reach from Battambang, while others can be visited in a day trip. The development problems vary from place to place – in Sampeou Loun the main problems are malaria and landmines; in Kamrieng the need is for infrastructure: roads, schools, wells; while in Koh Kralor the overwhelming need is for water.
There is little of a tourist nature to recommend these outlying districts. That is, unless you are interested in meeting the Khmer Rouge and seeing how they are faring. There are few war relics, because most of these regions were not on the front line and thus free from war. In addition, a few of these areas have guest houses, so you can stay overnight in a small outback Cambodian town and soak up the Cambodian rural atmosphere while you see what Khmer Rouge nightlife is like. A visitor to the Cambodia Less Traveled could spend a week or so touring from Pailin up the Thai border all the way to Poipet. In the past three years, the Battambang Provincial Government has attempted to open up these districts to development by creating formal district administrative structures. Thus, Battambang Province now has five new districts: Sampeou Loun, Phnom Proek, Kamrieng, Samlot, and Koh Kralor. Pailin is not a district of Battambang Province, but is called a ‘municipality’ in order to give free rein to Ieng Sary and the Khmer Rogue to extract the riches of the area as they so desire. The regions are all situated around the northwest to southeast edge of the province.
My visits to these areas have not been as a tourist as such. Rather, I led groups of Cambodian aid workers to these remote areas to assess the development needs of each one. In some ways, these activities restricted my movements, but in other ways, they allowed to discuss the situations in each of the areas with the former Khmer Rouge leaders themselves. In this way, I came away with a grass roots view of how the people living in the areas view the progress of their districts.
SAMPEOU LOUN
My first visit in the above context was to Sampeou Loun, the farthest north of the three new KR districts in Battambang Province. We took a roundabout but smoother way to get there, taking about 5 hours, and a shorter, bumpier road back, taking only 4 hours. The smoother road passes all the way south to Banan along the Sangker River from Battambang, then turns right to Phnom Sampeou, location of the ‘killing caves’ where Khmer Rouge victims were pushed through a skylight to fall some twenty meters to their death on the rocks inside the cave. After turning briefly onto Highway 10 towards Pailin (recently re-numbered Highway 57), the turnoff to the right to Kamping Puoy is only a couple of kilometers further on. Another half hour of not-so-good road takes you to the large lake/reservoir of Kamping Puoy.
Kamping Puoy is described in the Lonely Planet guide as the “Killing Dam”, where thousands of people were worked or starved to death in its construction. Today there are no monuments or war relics to remind the visitor of what occurred there, but the large lake, located an hour and a half from Battambang, is a popular picnic spot on weekends. The local residents are trying hard to drive many endangered species living across the lake into extinction by catching them and selling them to picnickers as delicacies. From Kamping Puoy the road worsens for the next 30-50 minutes. This section could be very muddy and impassable in the rainy season. But then it turns into an WFP Food-for-Work road on which you can zoom along at nearly 100 k/hr in places. At a forlorn filling station in the middle of nowhere, there is a turnoff to the left. This road, stlill pretty good, takes you for another hour towards the Thai border. There is a well marked turnoff to the right to Kamrieng, but carrying on straight and eventually bending away north is the road to Phnom Proek (= Morning Mountain) District. The road towards the Thai border is a scene of total destruction. The land is being cleared, so thousands of forest trees have been felled, thousands of animals and birds killed, and what is left burned. All you can see is charred bush and smoke lingering from the fires. The afternoon sun glows dark red-orange through the smoke.
The town of Phnom Proek has little to offer, except that it has a guest house where you can stay rather comfortably. We pushed on towards Sampeou Loun, another 30 km or another hour. Not far out of Phnom Proek town you begin to see the actual mountain of Phnom Proek. It is pretty impressive in the late afternoon sun. It was not the rounded, green forested hill I had expected. Rather, it is dry, craggy, and quite spectacular, considering the flat desolation you have been traveling through for the past two hours. The road continues through a mountainous area, and in fact the rest of the journey to Sampeou Loun has beautiful views of wild, odd-shaped mountains. This is the only area that could count as a tourist attraction in western Battambang Province. You might spend one night in Phnom Proek, then slowly work your way north to Sampeou Loun, perhaps detouring towards some mountain or other. But if you want to walk off the beaten path, the area is heavily landmined. Charging up one of those lovely mountains is not a good idea if there is not a well-worn path already there.
Sampeou Loun is a dumpy frontier town – wooden shacks, food stalls, a plastic-littered market square. But there are two guest houses that each charge 100 baht per night. There are also a couple of good restaurants where you can sit out in the evening and watch the sights over a cold Thai beer (no Cambodian beer available). The local Karoake bar provides a nice touch: its string of flashing lights over the main street are made from those colored Vietnamese powdered soap containers made of brightly colored and rather transparent plastic. Don’t stay out too late, though, because the electricity goes off at 10:00 pm. That can make sleeping difficult on a hot night. The guest house can fix you up with a fan and a battery if you ask. The mosquito nets are in good shape, but be sure you check. The district authorities told us that the number one problem in the district is malaria, beating out number two landmines for the top spot. I wore long sleeves and trousers, and put on repellant while sitting out in the evening.
The surreal thing about Sampeou Loun is that is seems a million miles from nowhere after your 5 hour ride through no-man’s land. But within walking distance of the town is the Thai border, where you can see paved roads and modern conveniences just a few tantalizing meters away. Locals are allowed to cross, but foreigners cannot, not even for a few minutes. The fact that locals can cross into Thailand makes the area economically a part of Thailand. Even Cambodian money is scarce. Produce is marketed into Thailand. These former Khmer Rouge are not poor. We saw dozens of brand new blue ford tractors with all the plowing paraphernalia. There are obviously some large scale farmers investing some bucks into the area.
But as we stopped along the road to fix a flat tire, the locals seemed rather down-and-out, and complained that there was no water. We later learned that wells had to be dug 85 meters deep to find water, not an acceptable proposition. So how does this complaint of no water by the locals square with the large-scale agriculture by the rich farmers? The most likely speculation is that these well connected former KR generals and now Cambodian military bigwigs have been able to rig up the pipes for irrigation schemes to water their own farms, thereby stealing the water from the villagers downstream. So it’s the same old story of the rich stealing from the poor, even way out here in the boondocks. The alternate route back to Battambang goes due east from Sampeou Loun, through more burned, desolate destruction. The road is quite good to within 10 km of Bavel, at which point it becomes terrible, and gets even worse after Bavel all the way to Highway 5 connecting Battambang with Sisophon. It is that stretch that prompted our driver to add an hour to our journey on the way to Sampeou Loun just to avoid the Bavel road.
Bavel is a rather uninteresting town, the center of a rich rice-producing area. So apart from rice mills and storehouses, the town has little of interest to offer. The Mongkol Borei River runs past the edge of town, a rather picturesque area with kids swinging from large tree branches before jumping into the water. But the town center is a dump, just a short resting point before continuing along the long, dusty (or muddy, depending on the season) road. Just before reaching Thmar Koul and Highway 5, we turned off to the right and proceeded along a small path through the rice paddies. This ‘shortcut’ clearly added a half-hour onto our trip. Off to the right is a small rise called Phnom Prasat. It is the site of a ruined Angkor-era temple, now completely fallen down and hardly worth a visit. But it does have some history: it was here that the Khmer Rouge led the Thmar Koul brigade of Lon Nol soldiers to be slaughtered. There is nothing there now to mark the event. Indeed, all along Highway 5 are large killing fields where there is no evidence that any violence ever occurred there. These out-of-the-way places are so peaceful today that it is hard to imagine the brutality that was perpetrated there some 25 years ago.
KAMRIENG
There are several ways to reach Kamrieng. The best is probably via the Kamping Puoy reservoir. Continue for another hour past the dam spillway to a filling station in the middle of nowhere. Turn left and proceed for another hour to a large sign marking the turnoff to Kamrieng, 20 kilometers to the left. The route from Battambang is the same as the road to Sampeou Loun. Before reaching Phnom Proek, however, there is a large and clear sign marking the turnoff to Kamrieng. From there it is only a half hour’s drive to Kamrieng town. In all, the trip from Battambang can be done in about four hours in the dry season.
The road from Pailin to Kamrieng has been out of use for the past few years because of a destroyed bridge. But CARE has been repairing that bridge, and it is expected to be in use in mid-2001, just in time for the rainy season, when the road will probably be impassable anyway. But count on easy travel from Pailin to Kamrieng by the end of 2001. It will still be about four hours from Battambang that way, because there are no expectations of a speedy repair of Highway 57 from Battambang to Pailin. Finally, you can reach Kamrieng from the north. The border road is pretty good. In fact, you could even go from Poipet to Malai, and then south through Sampeou Loun, Phnom Proek, and Kamrieng.
Our official trip to Kamrieng took place in March of 2001 on a typical hot day along the dusty back roads of the province. We arrived, exhausted, at the Lem Guest House in Kamrieng town. I had expected a rather larger town, as it is spoken of as having relatively greater importance than Sampeou Loun and Phnom Proek. But it looked just the same as the other towns: wooden shacks, a run-down market, litter, dust, squalor. As we sat in front of the guest house enjoying a drink, I noticed a large cement-block wall, perhaps 5 meters high, topped with vast quantities of barbed wire, and flanked by guardhouses. “I didn’t know there was a prison here”, I asked my colleagues. “Is it perhaps a former Khmer Rouge prison, or a Cambodian military prison.” They laughed. “That’s the casino.” they clarified.
And thus it dawned on me what Kamrieng is all about. The casino is an ingenious invention. No Cambodians are allowed to enter, hence the wall and prison-like demeanor. The entrance is placed squarely on the Thai border, and a small bridge crosses the dividing creek to the casino, built on Cambodian soil but accessible only from Thailand (Gambling is illegal in Thailand). But the situation is even more complicated! The large gate on the Cambodian side is used by the Cambodian workers and cleaners for entry during the day, but closed at night. However, gamblers can easily bribe the guard to allow them to enter Cambodia for a few hours at night. So the entire town of Kamrieng is given over to the sex industry. It is wall-to-wall brothels at night, hiring perhaps as many as 300 prostitutes for the large number of Thais illegally sneaking out of the casino. The girls are the usual story: sold into prostitution by their parents, or tricked into it, thinking it is some other job that they can use to pay off a debt. But the girls are charged for all sorts of expenses, so as to keep them in perpetual debt, and thus in perpetual servitude to the brothel owners, most likely Cambodian military or police officials.
In this way, Kamrieng approximates the lawlessness of the Old West. But it does not have the high military presence of Pailin, so you do not get the drunken brawls, shooting sprees, and wild-west behavior of Pailin. Although the evening air is filled with the sounds of the competing karaoke bars, it is really a rather peaceful place. Tourists cannot visit the casino from Cambodia, and the border is closed to foreigners, so you cannot possibly go to the casino during working hours. The next morning at 6:30 the gate for the cleaners was open, so I wandered in to the casino to have a look. There were still a few games of baccarat in progress among the rooms of empty tables, patronized by the hard-core all-night gamblers. Sums on the order of 500 baht or even less appeared to be the normal bet size. The large slot machine room was devoid of gamblers at this early (late?) hour. Baccarat and slot machines appeared to be the only games available. Then a security guard came over to me and told me I was there illegally and would have to leave. No big deal. I wandered out the same way I had wandered in.
So off we went to meet the government officials. They were late (surprise, surprise!) so we walked around the deserted district offices, located well outside the town. One colleague asked me if I wanted to say hello to Son Sen. This surprised me, as I knew he was dead. You will recall that Son Sen was the KR leader who disagreed with Pol Pot at the very end, wanting to negotiate with the government rather than continue the struggle. For his disagreement with Brother no. 1, Son Sen was accused of treason, murdered along with his entire family and their bodies run over several times by trucks. Well, it turns out that Son Sen’s now empty house is next door to the Kamrieng District office. There are now only a few soldiers camped out. There is no furniture – only a white board used for giving English lessons to the soldiers. The most recent English lesson was still written there: “Write a paragraph about your last job …. f**king pretty”. Well, these are soldiers, you know. And Son Sen's house is haunted, but not by Son Sen's ghost. The soldiers there say there are two female ghosts whom they cannot identify. These ghosts come up to the sleeping soldiers in the middle of the night and tap them on the shoulder. The soldiers awake to see two young women standing in front of them, who promptly walk down the steps and disappear.
The meeting with the officials proved interesting. The problems confronting other KR districts are not so critical here. Yes, there are mines, there is malaria, there is HIV, but it’s all pretty much under control. These former KR are doing pretty well. All they really want is more infrastructure, namely roads, wells, schools. Mostly, they seemed to want to be left alone. The trip back to Battambang took well over 5 hours because it had rained heavily during the night, unheard of in mid-March. The road was a mess, and we got stuck several times and had to push the van out of the mire. The stretch near Kamping Puoy was especially muddy; I wouldn’t want to try it in the rainy season. But by then, the road from Pailin should be open. Still, no one I know relishes the trip to Pailin, even in the dry season.
KOH KRALOR
Koh Kralor District is located to the southeast of Battambang. It is an easy day trip from Battambang. Just go out Highway 5 towards Phnom Penh for 31 km, and turn right just after the 260 km milestone. That road goes straight to Phnom Teppedey, the gateway to Koh Kralor, and then turns abruptly left. From there on, the road is very good indeed. Less than a half hour's ride takes you to the district headquarters. If you do it that way, the trip is pretty boring. But if you want the journey itself to be the centerpiece of your day, take the nori out to Phnom Teppedey.
Lorries, or nories, as they say it in the Battambang region, are small contraptions for riding on the railroad tracks. They are ingeniously simple: a set of wheels, a flat bed of bamboo, and a small generator attached to the wheels. They are becoming increasingly popular along the rail line all through Cambodia as a means of transporting people and goods to market towns. They are also becoming increasingly popular among tourists as a fun and adventurous new mode of transportation. If you are riding a motorcycle, you can just load it onto the nori, ride as far as you want, and then get off and continue your moto journey. That is exactly what some Battambang tourists are doing.
The nories do not leave from Battambang station. You have to go out to Aur Dambong station, where you will almost certainly see one or two preparing to head off for Phnom Teppedey, about two hours journey southeast towards Maung Russey. I say, almost certainly, because at times when the real train is scheduled to come along, the nories vanish. But right after the train passes is the moment when, at least in the direction of the train, you can travel without meeting any traffic. You can travel to Phnom Teppedey and return by moto along Highway 5, a difficult ride home compared to the smooth ride on the Nori.
One problem is that there are many nories traveling along the railroad track, so you will meet several along the way. When this happens, the less heavily loaded one must be completely disassembled and taken off the tracks for the other to pass. Everyone gets off while the driver takes off the generator, the flatbed, and finally the wheels from the tracks. When the other nori has passed, he puts the whole thing back together. This is all very amusing the first couple of times, but on a hot day, when you have to stand out in the hot sun while all this is going on, it can get a little irritating. Be sure to bring hats, karmas, sunscreen, or umbrellas to protect you from the sun.
The nories let you see a real slice of Cambodian life. They also take you to parts of the countryside where roads do not go. You are therefore away from the dust of the main roads, and the ride along the rails is much smoother than any motorcycle ride could ever be. In the south of Cambodia, the nories, or lorries there, are a bit different. There, a hole is cut out of the flatbed and a motorcycle is inserted. Instead of a generator, the motorcycle engine itself provides the power. And the rear wheel is slotted onto the track so that you actually ride the motorcycle on the railroad tracks.
PHNOM TEPPEDEY
Phnom Teppedey is a small mountain that sticks out of the plains northwest of Maung Russey District, and is visible from Highway 5. It lies at the end of the nori ride, where the tracks cross the road into Koh Kralor District. Otherwise, you can drive out Highway five 31 kilometers (just past kilometer marker 260) to the southeast before turning to the right in sight of the mountains. The rather poor road takes you straight to a small market at the base of the hill. It then turns sharply left to go on into the former Khmer Rouge territory of Koh Kralor.
There is a small pagoda on top, Wat Souvann Tiri (Golden Mountain Pagoda), but it is not much to speak of, even though the hill is of historical interest. It was here that the Khmer Rouge brought the captured troops of the Lon Nol regime for mass slaughter in 1975. A major killing field, the area has no monuments or any other evidence of the massacre. The hill is still mined: Mines Awareness Group (MAG) signs along the path to the top warn you not to leave the steps for fear of mines. There is a large old gun near the top of the stairway. Koh Kralor was for a long time controlled by the Khmer Rouge. In the past two years, it has been the scene of a large resettlement of internally displaced persons, and a new administrative district has been set up.
You can continue your moto drive into Koh Kralor along a very good road, but there is not much to see except for a lot of flat, undeveloped bush country, and some very poor people trying to eke out a living here. Actually, they say, the land is quite fertile, but the problem is lack of water. People here really have to struggle to get the land to produce. There are also plenty of landmines in some sections. These people are real pioneers moving onto unknown land and making their living. One might expect this to be a real wild-west place where anything goes, but the feeling is more the wild-west of Willa Cather's frontier hardships than that of Zane Grey's cowboy shoot-outs. In other words, Koh Kralor is pretty boring. If you want shoot-outs, go to Pailin or Sisophon, where there are lots of guns, grenades, and drunken soldiers getting into mischief in the evenings.
On the other hand, if you want to see minefields for the first time, this is a readily accessible place for it. The demining shifts from place to place, of course, but a good bet would be near the pagoda to the right of the main road as you come into the first village, called Phum Koh Kralor. There you can see the usual red 'Danger! Mines!' signs, along with painted stakes planted in the ground. Yellow means that a mine was found at this location. This is done to observe patterns (such as straight lines or grids) of minelaying. Red stakes show the boundary between demined and un-demined land, while red-and-yellow stakes show the site of unexploded ordnance (UXO). In fact, along the main road near the wat turnoff is a small temporary school on the right. Just behind the school is a small rubbish pile containing several rusted old Khmer Rouge mortar shells and rocket heads, free for the taking.
Economically, Koh Kralor is not sustainable because there is no water in the dry season. Agriculture is well nigh impossible. As a result, the inhabitants are not permanent, but spend the dry season elsewhere. The countryside is flat and featureless. So why would the government be interested in attempting to develop this essentially undevelopable region? There are stories of political games being played here. One version is that the land has been given to rich generals and higher-ups who hope to sell it for millions of dollars to the United Nations to parcel out to demobilized soldiers, who in turn will find the land uninhabitable and blame the UN, who in turn will throw even more money at the problem. Those are the kinds of games going on all over Cambodia these days.
RATTANAK-MONDUL DISTRICT
To those few people who have ever heard of Rattanak-Mondul District, the name probably brings only one thing to mind: the horrible road to Pailin. This road makes the road from Poipet to Siem Reap look like the M1. 'Highway' number 10 from Battambang to Pailin has recently been renumbered as Highway 57, although few residents of the area know of the change and still call it route 10. As the rumor goes, the government in Battambang has no money to pay for improving the road, so the Pailin government offered to repair the road all the way to Battambang, but the former Battambang governor refused, saying that Battambang would lose face if it were known that Pailin had money for road-building while Battambang did not.
Phnom Sampeou and the Tableau of Crocodile Mountain: Highway 10 proceeds from Battambang out toward Phnom Sampeou, one of Battambang's real tourist attractions. This mountain, with its clifftop pagoda and Khmer Rouge 'Killing Caves', is featured in most of the tourist guidebooks, and most tourists to Battambang visit the site by detouring south into Banan District just to avoid the dreaded Highway 10. Beyond Phnom Sampeou, however, there are no alternative routes, and the road gets worse and worse. As you continue past Phnom Sampeou, the mountain on the right is Crocodile Mountain, and further on, the spread of mountains on the left is Rum Say Sok mountain. These, together with all the mountains in the area, form a tableau depicting the characters in the well-known Cambodian folktale of Rum Say Sok. Rum Say Sok was a beautiful maiden. A man fell in love with her and left his wife to be with her. His wife sent a crocodile to catch her husband's ship, but Rum Say Sok let down her long magic hair, which soaked up all the water so that the husband could escape the crocodile. Phnom Sampeou means 'Sailboat Mountain', and the mountain right next to it is the sail itself. From Phnom Sampeou, Crocodile mountain and Rum Say Sok Mountain don't look much like a crocodile and a beautiful maiden, but as you drive further past Phnom Sampeou, a little imagination completes the image. Off to the left of the road, Rum Say Sok is lying down, her face formed by a flat-topped mountain, her necklace a small knob to the right, her breasts further to the right, and her knees and feet further still. The mountains trailing off to the left form her long hair. Looking back, you can see the crocodile's body to the left, his head a bit to the right, and his long snout formed by the palm trees pointing towards the road.
The 10th Century Temples at Sneng: After a rather boring and bumpy ride, you come to the village of Sneng. The main street is a nightmarish quagmire even in the dry season. It is a thoroughly disgusting town. However, its squalor is redeemed by a very old temple just sitting along the side of the road with no fanfare or indications that there is anything special to see. It dates back prior to Angkor Wat, to about the year 1000. It was a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva. There is a Shiva linga at the right, and the lintels over the doorways contain beautiful Hindu friezes. In one, Shiva is seen lying on his favorite lion-dog. To the rear, a gnome-like god is seen atop a pole resting on the back of a turtle. These reliefs are remarkably well preserved, and it is a wonder they have not all been stolen long ago. Only the left-hand lintel has been removed; the other three are intact, in good condition, and of interesting subjects. Twenty meters further on, there is a wat set back from the road on the left. Behind the wat are three ancient temples, probably from the 10th century. They are made of brick, a sign of their antiquity, but the brick makes them look as though they could have been made yesterday. They are not very picturesque or photogenic. There is one elaborately carved lintel with a typical headless reahu monster, but otherwise, any carvings of interested were looted long ago. The locals do not seem very much interested in the temples. On my last visit, at the rear of the three brick temples a volleyball game was in progress. Near the stone temple by the road, some girls were praying in a small shrine to the local gods or Niek Taa. They were asking the god to tell them the winning number in the week's lottery.
Sdau - Front Line of Battle with the Khmer Rouge: So you proceed onwards from Sneng to the town of Sdau, headquarters of Rattanak Mondul District. There is even a guesthouse of sorts there, located just down a small street to the left, right before the market area. There are no hotel rooms as such, just beds out in the open for 5000 riel per night. There are mosquito nets but no electricity at night. Be sure you cover up, because there is a lot of malaria in the area. Across the street from the market area is a restaurant with an old rusted Foster's sign, although the last Foster's Beer was sold there years ago. That seems to be the center of activity, at least on Sunday noon when the television shows Thai boxing. At that time, nearly a hundred locals can be seen avidly cheering their heroes and betting their week's wages on the outcome. Looking south from town, there are two nearby mountains, with a third mountain between them in the distance. That is Phnom Vai Chab, the first place in Cambodia to be controlled by the Khmer Rouge way back in 1965. From there, they took the surrounding Samlot District by 1967, and of course gradually took over the entire country by 1975.
Rattanak Mondul District was the center of fighting all through the early nineties. The KR controlled the territory west to Pailin, while the Government controlled the land east to Battambang. That put the road from Sdau to Treng on the front line of battle. Unlike in the rest of Cambodia, where guerrilla warfare was the rule, this area was the scene of many pitched battles. Or more accurately, it was a sort of World War I front line that moved back and forth. In the dry season, government troops would advance past Treng and threaten Pailin, but in the rainy season the KR would retake Treng and sometimes Sdau. A few years ago, I visited Sdau just a couple of weeks after the Khmer Rouge surrender of Pailin. The entire district was deserted, except for a few squatter huts of newly arrived internally displaced persons. All the buildings of Sdau were thoroughly obliterated. Today, the district is returning to a normal kind of life. The hospital has been rebuilt by the Christian organization World Vision, and the school across from the hospital has been partially restored by Hun Sen, whose blue and yellow logo can be seen atop the rear school building. The script letters in his logo are the Khmer equivalent of H.S. The village of Treng lies a few more bone-jarring kilometers down the road. Treng was the village that was taken and retaken dozens of times by the Government and Khmer Rouge forces. We stopped at a small shop where a one-legged man was doing a thriving business in roof thatching. We had a good chat with him about the area. What was the biggest problem for development in the area, we asked. Without hesitating a moment he replied, "mines" . Indeed, Rattanak-Mondul and neighboring Samlot Districts are by far the two most heavily mined districts in all of Cambodia.
For this reason, adventure tourists are advised not to stray too far from the main road. The road south of Sdau is considered safe, but to the north, there is no telling what danger lurks. The roads are of course traveled every day, but the danger comes with two vehicles pass and one must leave the main roadway, even by a meter or less. Anti-vehicle mines along the side of the road, not triggered by pedestrians, can be activated by heavier vehicles even after years in the ground. World Vision and the Mines Awareness Group (MAG) have erected mine-awareness billboards all along the roads, and they mean business. You can take the road south towards Phnom Vai Chab. The road is so good that many people take it as part of a detour to avoid stretches of highway 10. The state of the road has an interesting story, according to my World Vision host. Several years ago World Vision built the road at a cost of over $20,000. In 2000, a former Battambang governor put in some repairs at a cost of about $1000 and proceeded to erect a sign claiming that he had built the road. World Vision was not too happy about that. Back on Highway 10 again, just before the village of Phcheav, a reminder of the past wars is an armored personnel carrier sitting to the left of the road in the shade of a large tree. You can miss it if you are not watching for it. There are usually a bunch of kids playing on the frame of the old vehicle, from which everything else of any value has been stripped. The children cavorting on the old war remnant make for interesting photography. To the right is a primary school where World Vision have set up a 'children's club'. We visited this club on a Sunday when lots of children were playing with the jigsaw puzzles there and having a great time. The 'teacher' has materials for some interesting activities with them: awareness of children's rights, notions of participating in village development, awareness of child trafficking, and information about HIV.
The Road to Samlot: Just past the school is the turnoff to the left leading to Samlot District. This important road was constructed by UNHCR to lead to its large resettlement of refugees in Samlot. You will almost certainly see the anti-mining CMAC trucks going that way, or stopped at the intersection for a drink. Foreign donors severely cut back CMAC funding in 2000, after a string of corruption and million-dollar embezzlement scandals involved the Cambodian CMAC Director. When the government decided to thumb its nose at the donors and reinstated the corrupt Director, the donors pulled out. However, some donors remain, and the thoroughly corrupt CMAC continues its work because the donors do not want to be blamed for the deaths of thousands of mine victims should they cease operations. In fact, on my last visit to the area, we saw CMAC trucks carrying passengers, trees, and other goods, described by my guide as 'private purposes'. Only 7km along this very good road is a local tourist attraction called Sek Sok. But I will leave the description of that place until my account of Samlot District, to appear in May 2001, after I try to sneak in another extensive visit to the area before the rainy season begins.
If you go through Rattanak-Mondul, it will undoubtedly be on the way to Pailin. With enough interesting sites along the way, you can take the whole day to amble along and not get too tired of the bad road. Motorbikes can negotiate the potholes much better than cars. You might plan to overnight in Pailin and then head north to Kamrieng and the other former Khmer Rouge districts along the Thai border. It is interesting just to see what has become of this war-ravaged area and how its inhabitants are handling the peace. Despite many problems, especially landmines and malaria, they are doing quite all right. The stories above are courtesy of Ray Zepp : March 2001.
SAMLOT, MINE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
Samlot District has one of the saddest histories of anyplace in the world. It was the first district in Cambodia to be controlled by the Khmer Rouge as a 'liberated area', back in 1967. Thirty years later, after Khmer Rouge number two Ieng Sary had defected to the Government side with his Pailin Khmer Rouge troops, faction fighting broke out in Samlot between the Khmer Rouge hard liners and the defectors. Fierce fighting raged for another two years, with Funcipec-CPP troops entering the mixture of hostile forces. Residents who had toiled under the yoke of the Khmer Rouge were forced to flee - some 15,000 to refugee camps in Thailand, another 30,000 to other areas of Cambodia as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs in refugee jargon). Their homes and farms were destroyed, while each fighting faction laid down its share of landmines. As a result, Samlot District became the most heavily mined district in Cambodia, and perhaps in the entire world. An estimated 65% of the district is minefield, of which 25% of the mines are along the Thai border. Of the mined land, only 10% has been cleared. Samlot District annually leads other Cambodian districts in the number of landmine victims by a wide margin. Handicapped persons make up over 3% of the population. That may seem like a small percentage, but it represents one person in thirty. Fortunately, land along the major roads has been demined in the past couple of years. Houses and farms are springing up. It looks like a pretty normal place these days. But the number of mine victims is actually increasing. Why? Because the farmers, having cleared and planted the demined land along the roads, are pushing inland away from the roads to expand their farming, and in doing so they are moving onto uncleared land and are stepping on more mines than before.
Mine Tourism
So why would anyone want to visit Samlot, let alone live there? For tourists there is always the voyeur factor. Many tourists come to Cambodia to see the remnants of the Khmer Rouge era and get a buzz out of the danger of mines and unexploded ordinance. Unfortunately for them, there are no tanks or big guns to along the roads in Samlot, although there are some in inaccessible regions along the Thai border. Still, it is interesting to see just how people are coping under these difficult circumstances. In fact, more and more people are moving to Samlot because of the economic opportunities of growing fruits and vegetables. Prior to 1967 northern Samlot was a well-developed agricultural region. If the mines can be cleared the area is expected to become a center for agricultural development. Unlike Sampeou Loun to the north, or Koh Kralor to the east, Samlot has plenty of water, and plants grow profusely. Samlot is a beautiful region - lush, green rolling hills with the much larger Cardamom Mountains in the background. And there are plenty of areas still heavily forested with majestic big trees. The visitor has a first impression of a frontier land full of homesteading families carving their small plots out of the surrounding forest.
Surprisingly, the road system is excellent by Cambodian standards. UNHCR, in resettling the 45,000 refugees and IDPs, did an outstanding job of building good roads. You can travel 90 km/hr on some of them, a rare phenomenon indeed in Cambodia! There are at present no guesthouses in Samlot. It takes 3-5 hours of driving from Battambang, and you would not want to make the round trip in the same day. So if you want to stay overnight, you should arrange with one of the NGOs that maintain rough offices there. In Battambang, you might contact Action Nord Sud, Emergency, or Cambodian Vision in Development and arrange for them to have their field offices open. For $5 a person, you get a rough camp bed, mosquito net, and meals prepared by the organization's cook if ordered in advance. The offices are all located near one another in Tasanh, the central commune and District Headquarters. When the District was created in 1997, the existing town of Old Samlot was not chosen as headquarters since (1) the land was too full of landmines, (2) the land titles were too complicated, and (3) Old Samlot was not centrally located. So the new town of Tasanh was set up on only moderately mined, government-owned land. Even today, it is not really a town at all. Action revolves around the deminers' camp, where several shops, restaurants, karaoke bars, and brothels have sprung up. At least you can get something to eat and drink if you overnight in Tasanh! And the restaurants may have wild game on sale, especially a wild, spotted cat like a small leopard that the locals call Klaa Trey or Fish Tiger. Some shops also keep monkeys of a small, reddish species not seen elsewhere. And all the shops and restaurants have forest orchids growing on poles and porches.
Samlot still has a lot of wildlife, although it is safe to say that it is disappearing fast. Fortunately, birds cannot step on landmines, but birdwatching is frustrating. From the ANS office there are lots of birds singing in the trees on the hill behind the wat, but one does not dare rush off in pursuit of beautiful birds through the minefields marked with the ubiquitous red skull-and-crossbones. But staying overnight in Tasanh is a pleasant experience. You can sleep in the peace and quiet of the mountains. The porches of all the NGO offices, built on a rise, look out over the mountains, and to sit in the peaceful evening and watch a full moon rise over the mountains is an unforgettable experience. Adding to the idyllic scenery are thousands of fireflies - and huge ones at that. One member of our party said that King Sihanouk, due to his on-again-off-again presence in Cambodia, is becoming known as the 'Firefly King' (ampil-ampek). And be sure to get up early to see the sunrise over the mountains. But cover up and put on mosquito repellant, for the area is full of malarial mosquitoes. As we sat in the cool of the night, an unlighted truckload of freshly cut timber rumbled by in the darkness. We might have been suspicious that it was illegal logging, but we were happy that in the past week the Prime Minister had publicly announced to the world that all illegal logging in Cambodia had been eliminated. So we were reassured that there was nothing sinister about this transport of wood under cover of darkness.
Beyond Tasanh
The road is pretty good beyond Tasanh, and leads to a T-junction with an even better road. The left branch leads south to O Noneunh, a village settled almost entirely by handicapped people. It is rather eerie to arrive in O Noneunh in the midst of blind persons, amputees, widows, and other vulnerable people all working together in self-help groups. There is a well-known Khmer folk tale of two brothers, one blind, the other crippled, who work together with the blind one carrying the crippled one on his back. This image is appropriate to describe the inhabitants of O Noneunh. Past O Noneunh the road deteriorates. In fact, the southern half of Samlot, as well as Veal Veng District to the south, are totally inaccessible by road from July through October each year in the rainy season. The right branch at the t-junction leads mostly west to O Rout Kroh, which means something like 'tank in the canal'. Presumably a military tank got stuck in one of the waterways near here. O Rout Kroh is the only real 'town' in Samlot District. There are lively shops, restaurants, and several brothels, where HIV/AIDS is becoming a problem, especially because the uneducated former Khmer Rouge out this remote way have no idea what HIV is or how it is transmitted. A local NGO is setting up an HIV awareness project in this commune.
We had an interesting conversation with a woman who had opened her restaurant after the 1996 'defection'. She had lived through the 'Thirty Years War' and was sick of war. She expressed an interesting opinion in pointing to the Sam Rainsy Party sign across the street. She said they should get rid of the Party, since political parties lead to wars. No yearning for democracy here! It may be that many Cambodians tolerate the one-party dominance of the CCP, and its concomitant corruption and heavy-handedness, as an acceptable alternative to the horrors of the wars of the past thirty years. Before reaching O Rout Kroh you pass a small turnoff to the right. This is the road to Old Samlot. It becomes a sea of mud in the rainy season, when Old Samlot becomes off limits. We tried to reach Old Samlot in our 4-wheel drive Land Cruiser, and passed a tractor coming the other way just before we started up a very muddy hill. We could not make it up the hill and slid back down. There was the tractor waiting for us with cable already attached to tow us. The tractor driver knew that we would not make it.
Beyond Old Samlot is one of the area's few visitable tourist spots: a waterfall coming down off the mountains. By keeping to the paths you can feel safe from mines and enjoy the cool water in the forest setting. The road wends it way through Samlot Commune to a section called the 400 exits, which means, as you can guess, that there are 400 smugglers' trails and tracks leading into Thailand from here. The areas near the roads are well cultivated with peanuts, corn, soybeans, and sesame. This area is home to all sorts of exotic fruits. May is durian and rambutan season. These and every imaginable kind of exotic fruit can be bought for a song - longans, jackfruit, lansats, santols, sapodillos, and some others whose English names I could not find. The one drawback to agriculture here is the lack of markets and roads. People are forced to sell at very low prices just to get rid of their crops. We bought some delicious bananas in town at a price of 5 baht for 60 bananas. In dollars that works out to about 11 cents, or about 5 or 6 bananas for a penny. We stopped at the home of a farmer that someone in our group knew. We gave him 100 baht and he filled the entire back of our car with corn, pumpkins, sugar cane, and other goodies. A lot of these fruit trees are the result of a Khmer Rouge strategy for looking to the future. Their policy was to plant something every day. So people spent a minute or two of their spare time each day planting a fruit tree. The strategy is now literally 'bearing fruit'. Some people are now saying that there is too much fruit in Samlot.
Samlot, Past and Future
The inhabitants we met were not bitter about their treatment by the Khmer Rouge over the years. In fact, we heard several stories praising their policies, such as training one person in twelve to be able to treat wounds caused by explosions. We met a man whose legs had been amputated by a team of such barefoot doctors and who was grateful that his life had been saved. There is a lot of hope for Samlot. Because of its huge potential for agriculture, it will certainly develop in time. The immediate problem is income generation and the threat of mines. Most of the more well-off identified the poor road to Battambang as a major obstacle to the marketing of crops and the development of the region. For those returned refugees and IDPs still living at subsistence level, markets are not the problem. Rather, their small plots of land are not enough to generate enough food, and when they find enough time to clear more land, they have to worry about landmines. A visit to Samlot need not be dangerous or even worrisome if you stay on the roads and paths. In that case, it is quite interesting to see how this unique region is developing after years of warfare. And even if economics are not your thing, at thevery least, you can enjoy the beautiful scenery of this forested, hilly countryside. Above story courtesy of Ray Zepp: May 2001.
LOST IN THE CARDAMOMS
The Cardamom Mountains, located along the Thai-Cambodian border between Koh Kong and Pailin, are perhaps the wildest region in Cambodia. The more well-known forests in Cambodia - Rattanakiri and Mondulkiri Provinces - are becoming havens for agriculturalists hoping to make profits on large-scale plantations of rubber, coffee, and cashew nuts. Those regions are also very frequently visited by tourists wishing to see the lifestyles of the various hill tribes who already live in those areas. But in most of the Cardamom mountain area, there is no one.
Little is known about the Cardamom mountains. So little, in fact, that in 2000 an official expedition was organized to investigate the flora and fauna there. They found evidence of an abundance of wildlife, including many endangered species, and even one species of crocodile that was thought to be extinct in the region. Reports of sightings in 2001 included an aerial view of a very large herd of wild elephants.
In 1997 the government decided to create a new district in western Pursat Province, called Veal Veng District. Prior to 1997 Veal Veng was under Khmer Rouge control, but in fact very few people actually lived there. The Khmer Rouge occupied areas north of Veal Veng such as Samlot District and Koh Kralor District in southern Battambang Province, but Veal Veng remained relatively untouched. Nowadays, there is some effort to open up the area. There is a road from Pursat to Pramaoy, the District headquarters, and a few other makeshift roads have sprung up. Foreign Aid projects have begun there, such as the building of a few primary schools by the French NGO Action Nord Sud, and the sinking of wells by the local NGO DEEP (good name, eh?). DEEP is actually a French acronym, standing for Developpement, Education, et Eau Potable
I went to Veal Veng in May, 2001, with a group of local NGO members wishing to assess the possibilities for new development projects in the district. Our aim was to talk with District officials about the needs of the people there, as well as to observe the work of DEEP, since one of the team members was a DEEP official. Since he knew the area - its roads and its officials - and so he was to be our guide for the trip in a Land Cruiser and driver provided by Action Nord Sud. However, at the last minute, he pulled out, and we decided to proceed on our own.
How do you reach Veal Veng?
There are basically two routes to Veal Veng from Battambang. You can go all the way to Pursat and then west to Pramaoy, or you can go almost all the way to Pailin before turning south through Samlot District. We decided to drive to Samlot and spend the night before starting off for Veal Veng the next morning and then continuing on to Pursat. A colleague of mine had done the Pursat-Veal Veng-Samlot circuit starting in Pursat earlier in the week, and passed on a map describing the road conditions. All along the route he had marked phrases like, 'bad spots here', 'pretty bad', and 'really bad' . The road, he declared, was excellent from Pursat to Pramaoy, but then 'really bad' between there and Krapeu Pi ('Two Crocodiles' in Khmer). When I first approached him about our chances of getting through, he could only say, "Good Luck!" But in any event, it is quite possible to reach Pramaoy from Pursat.
From the other direction, one must first reach Samlot - no easy task in itself along the notorious route 57 to Pailin. But after the turnoff south from route 57, the road (constructed by UNHCR) is in quite good shape as far as the District Headquarters of Tasanh, and even a good ways beyond. But then you must leave the good road and inch your way for three hours across the jungles of southern Samlot just to reach Krapeu Pi (estimated as 'pretty bad' by my colleague). Then you still have the 'really bad' stretch to get to Pramaoy.
You cannot expect to go from Battambang to Veal Veng and back in one day. Furthermore, there is no accommodation in Veal Veng. That is why we decided to stay at the Action Nord Sud (ANS) office in Tasanh, Samlot. Tasanh is a little over three hours from Battambang, leaving a long drive the next day to reach Veal Veng. You may be able to ask ANS in Battambang for permission to stay there if you offer them some money to pay the guard and cook for opening the place for you. The accommodation is very basic: cots (camp beds) with mosquito nets, and no electricity most of the time.
We set out from Tasanh at 7:00 am for the long drive to Veal Veng and Pursat. The road is good from Tasanh towards old Samlot Village, but there is a t-junction where you turn left (south) instead of going north to the village. This road is good for another 10 km, but then you must turn left at a large sign marking a demined road, about a kilometer past the village of O Tamol. This road is decidedly worse. It is marked on old maps as highway 43. We hadn't gone far before we came to a rather large stream that we had to ford. It was an idyllic site. We got out and took photographs of the car plowing through the water. There was no sense of urgency. The Land Cruiser was very powerful and well equipped for such a crossing. The road continued through several villages: O Samrael, O Rumchek, O Deum Sway, O Deum Chek, O Cham Leu, and finally the population began to thin out between Steung Touch Lraum and Steung Touch Leu. A word on place names: the word O means 'creek', while Steung means a larger stream or small river. Steung Touch Kraum means 'Lower Small River' and Steung Touch Leu means 'Upper Small River'.
After Steung Touch Leu there were no houses or signs of habitation. We were in the deep forest in a valley between two smaller ranges of the Cardamom mountains. The road was terrible, but it was adorned by thousands upon thousands of butterflies, perhaps the most butterflies I have seen at one time in my entire life. They sat by the hundreds along the mud a pools in the road, and from the car looked like two species: an orange one and a black one.
The road continued to deteriorate. There were deep ruts full of mud and water. Our skillful driver managed to avoid most of them, but it was inevitable that we should fall into one particularly deep one. Suddenly we were stuck up to our axles. No problem, I thought, as the driver started to dig us out. So I went for a bird walk along the road. (Note the word 'along'. We dared not leave the road for fear of landmines.) It was a glorious morning in the deep forest. There were strange bird calls resounding from all sides, but the birds themselves remained hidden, and I was not about to plunge in the mined bush to chase after them.
An attempt to get the car going again proved unsuccessful. It looked like a tougher job than we had thought. We gathered rocks in the hot sun. (We fought the forest and the forest won.) Of course, we dared not gather them from off the roadway. Just as we were nearing our second attempt, a motorcycle passed and we debated whether to ask him to send a truck from the next village to pull us out. But we were optimistic that we would get out this time, so we decided against asking for the truck. But we failed again to get the car out of the rut. Well, to make a long story short, it took us four hours and four major attempts to dig out of the mud. So it was 1 pm already and we had not even reached the Krapeu Pi or the 'really bad' stretch of the road.
Into Veal Veng
So we crossed into Veal Veng District along the desolate forest track. We passed no signs of life and saw no dwellings, agriculture, or even logging. Finally we reached a crossroads with about four huts. There was an ANS school building and a DEEP water pump. Much to our surprise, this was Krapeu Pi. We had expected a center of activity with shops and a market, and all we found was four houses. After our work at digging out the car, we drank gallons of water and managed to buy some soft drinks from one of the houses. One of the residents pointed out the road onward to Pramaoy and drew us a small map showing a couple of roads branching off into the forest.
Veal Veng is divided into five communes. The total population of the district is only 5,024, and when you consider that the district's area is over 10,000 square kilometers, you get a VERY low population density. Krapeu Pi is even lower, as the total population of the entire commune is listed as 827 persons for about 2000 square kilometers. Development projects in Veal Veng include 5 DEEP wells in an around Krapeu Pi, 3 ANS-built schools, agricultural projects by Action Development Agriculture (ADA) in chicken farming and (get this) crocodile farming. The European Union's ECHO runs a cow bank and a rice seed bank. By 2 o'clock we were off again. We passed several houses, including that of the commune chief on the right, and we stopped to pay our respects and to ask directions. We would have liked to interview him about conditions in Krapeu Pi, but we were running late and wanted to reach Pursat by nightfall. After about 10 km the 'road' forked, but we opted for the left branch, where there were signs of car tires, while the right fork appeared to be just a small motorcycle track. This was where the road was expected to get 'really bad', and so it was. At every mud puddle we held our breath, because another bogdown might mean spending the night in the jungle. And there were plenty of occasions when we got stuck temporarily. Luckily the car was able to reverse and to power out of the mud. On other occasions there were small tree stumps sticking out of the middle of the road and we had to take our axe and cut them down to size.
But for all the difficulties with the road, it was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on. Not only did it traverse some of the densest jungle in Cambodia, for the most of the way it bordered on a pristine jungle river flowing through a hidden valley between two high ridges of the Cardamom mountains. We only caught glimpses of the river because the forest was so thick. We saw all sorts of birds flying through the canopy, and some running only, such as the wild chicken, a species that looks almost exactly like the common chicken but lives wild in the jungle. We also saw hornbills, eagles, and the brilliant red-headed trogon. After an hour and a half of seeing no sign of human life of any kind, we finally reached a clearing where a team of workers were processing resin or oil from a sort of yellow wood. We asked directions of them, and were told the bad news....that we had taken the wrong road and that this road would only take us up into Maung Russei District. We debated turning back, but had no stomach for returning on that tortuous road. We took one of the workers as a guide. His first information was that it might be difficult to cross the river.
We took an even more obscure route from the camp north and finally crossed the river with no problems whatsoever. But on the other side there was a man (fisherman? where did he come from?) who told us that the road ahead was impassable and that we would have to return to the camp. The appearance of this mysterious man in the middle of nowhere, and his information there on the banks of this lost river, made me think of Charon guiding dead souls across the river Styx.
So we returned to the camp and continued along the road we had come on. Our newly acquired guide assured us that we would come to a village by nightfall. From there, the road would be better all the way to Maung Russei (and thus National Highway 5 to Battambang). So we plodded on, still worried that any further setback would oblige us to spend the night in the jungle. We asked the guide about what dangers lurked there. His main preoccupation was with large snakes, with only a secondary concern for tigers. Probably the greatest danger was malaria and dengue fever. The area is rife with mosquitoes of both sorts, and the malaria parasites are said to be drug resistant. People had told us that this deep in the jungle there were no more landmines, but the guide told us a story that he had met a former soldier who had laid three mines in the road many years ago. The first destroyed a tank during the war. (We could hardly imagine a tank passing through that deserted area.) The second got an oxcart a few years later. But the third one was never found, and was presumably just off to the side of the road somewhere. We were worried that one of our many off-road excursions might hit that last mine. We also saw a red UXO (UneXploded Ordinance) right in the road: an old rocket head.
Veal Veng made the news back in 1975. A South Vietnamese general, attempting to escape the country as it was falling into communist hands, took off in a helicopter with his family. He flew to Thailand but was not allowed to land. He had spare fuel but needed to land in order to put the fuel in the tank, and so he landed in a clearing in Veal Veng. He was captured by the Khmer Rouge, who murdered him and his family. It is said that the helicopter is still in Veal Veng today.
The many stops to check the road afforded me the opportunity to experience the wonderful peace of the deep forest. There were plenty of huge trees not yet reached by the loggers. There were sounds of birds, frogs, and insects in the late afternoon sunshine filtering through the forest canopy. There were still plenty of butterflies, although not so many as before. But looking up close, I noticed that there were a great many varieties. They were unafraid of humans and came to sit on us. As many as six butterflies at one time were sitting on me, becoming as pesky as flies. We had no idea where we were, only the assurance of the guide that we would reach human habitation before long. We crossed into a region where it had not rained in several days, and that made the going easier. Finally we came upon a couple of oxcarts bringing sawed wood out of the forest. The number of oxcarts increased until we came to a t-junction with a much more heavily traveled but still badly rutted road (probably by logging trucks), and we knew we were near civilization.
By 6:00 we had emerged from the forest into the village of Boeung Ampil (= Sugarcane Lake). The people clearly made their living by cutting down the forest south of the village. We came to an impassable point in the road: mud (according to the farmer) as deep as a cow's shoulder. The farmer pointed us through his banana plantation and said "no problem, no mines". So we did a kilometer or two of off-road driving through eye-level grass and then across dry rice paddies, until we rejoined a road that residents said led to a wat. Even this road was in pretty bad shape. It was after 6:30 and it was dark by the time we reached the commune of Kbal Houng and the road leading some 25 km to Maung Russei. But we knew we were, so to speak, 'out of the woods'. It was quite a celebration in the little restaurant in Maong Russei. We were so relieved to be on our way home instead of spending the night in the jungle with malaria mosquitos, tigers, snakes, landmines, and who knows what else.
It had been a day of disasters - getting stuck in the mud for four hours, taking the wrong road into the middle of nowhere, missing our meetings with Veal Veng District leaders, in fact, not reaching the capital of Veal Veng at all. But I would not have missed that jungle road along the river for all the world. It goes down in my mental records as one of my high points of Cambodia. For that marvelous experience I considered the trip a great success. Above story courtesy of Ray Zepp : May 2001.
In April 2001, Ray Zepp travelled through parts of Cambodia that very few tourists manage to see and has penned the following articles, which are housed on George Moore's website:-
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