Andy Brouwer's Cambodia Tales

Ray Zepp & the Snuol Loop - December 2001

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 has also recently published a new book, Around Battambang, and its only on sale in Cambodia's second city.

Ray uses his holidays to travel around Cambodia and one of his latest trips is detailed below. My thanks to Ray for permission to post this story:-

The Snuol Loop

No one talks much about the part of Cambodia east of Kampong Cham. With the opening of the new Mekong River bridge, this area will undoubtedly open up to tourists, but is there anything there for tourists to see? I had heard of the Suong area as the site of old French rubber plantations, so perhaps there would be some old French houses á la Kep. But I suppose the principal attraction was the name Snuol. It has that ring to it: the end of nowhere.

I could see from the map that it might be possible to follow old Highway 7 from Kampong Cham through Suong and Memot, then head to Snuol and north to Kratie, before traveling east along the south bank of the Mekong through Chhlong and Krouch Chmar. I had read Caroline Nixon's write-up of Chhlong from Andy Brouwer's website a year ago, and remembered her description of old colonial houses and the fact that that there was a guest house there. But I decided not to re-read her story, to visit the places myself, and then compare my story with hers.

Finally, the Ministry of Tourism map shows some old temples in the area. around Suong, and one near the Mekong at Steung Trang. So with the prospect of colonial architecture, lost temples, and remote villages, I thought the loop through Suong, Memot, Snuol, Kratie, Chhlong, and Krouch Chmar might prove possible and interesting. I asked my colleagues what they knew:

"Suong? The US bombing followed by the Khmer Rouge wars destroyed everything worht seeing there.

"Memot? Everything there is covered with dust. Dustiest place I've ever seen.

"Snuol? Never been there, but I've heard it's a shithole."

No one had anything good to say about the area. But I had to go see for myself.

Kampong Cham to Suoung

I took the bus to Kampong Cham and was immediately met by the pack of moto drivers. One of them, named Thol, spoke pretty good English and seemed to know the area across the Mekong pretty well. So within minutes of my arrival we were off across the Mekong in search of a temple called Preah Theat Thmar Da, the name shown on the Tourism map. According to the map, it is situated only a few kilometers from Highway 7, just south of the turnoff at Thnal Tutong down Highway 15 towards Prey Veng. It looked easy, but of course finding sites in Cambodia is rarely easy. And so it proved to be the case this time.

First, the floods had pretty much destroyed Highway 7 just across the Mekong at Tonle Bet. The reconstructed dike was fairly rough going, but after a couple of kilometers, the road smoothed out and was quite easy going.

We turned right (south) at Thnal Tutong, expecting the temple to be only a few kilometers away, but the Tourism map proved quite wrong. There is apparently no temple to be seen in the vicinity of the icon shown on the map. The road passes through rubber plantations and goes through a small village with a large rubber processing plant. After a flat tire and a wait in the afternoon heat while the tire was repaired, we reached O Reang Ov and turned right (west).

Preah Theat is located about 10 kilometers further southwest, precisely where the map shows the other temple that the map calls Choeung Srok, a name that no one we spoke to had ever heard of. The small track through the bush was not bad at all. In fact, it was quite a beautiful ride through shady woods and slightly rolling countryside. We asked for Preah Theat at several junctures, and everyone pointed us on with no hesitation. At the quaint little crossroads village of Preah Theat we turned left and covered the final few kilometers to the temple.

Well, there is no more temple standing. There is only the laterite base and some fallen sandstone lintels. According to the people standing around, there were two temples, a male temple and a female temple. This was apparently a common practice in pre-Angkor times. In fact, the local people call this place Wat Preah Theat Bros-Srey (male and female), rather than the Thmar Da name shown on the Tourism map. The Thmar Da probably refers to the fact that only the foundation of the old temples remain today. The temples had been in good condition in 1970, but were torn down by the Khmer Rouge. Usually the Khmer Rouge left old temples standing, because Pol Pot wanted to reconstruct the glory days of Angkor, but aparently in this case the temples were used by the Lon Nol troops as gun emplacements against the Khmer Rouge and were destroyed in the battle that ensued.

However, the main point of interest at Preah Theat is the old wat, built perhaps two hundred years ago. It is of a style quite distinct from present-day pagodas – more compact and square (not rectangular) but high and ornate. In colonial times it was used as a hall for traditional Khmer orchestra concerts. The musicians are depicted in excellently preserved paintings inside the temple.

Many of the laterite chunks from the destroyed temples can be seen in the wall surrounding the wat. The vihear itself (right next to the music temple) is of colonial vintage but not very interesting. This was apparently an important wat, despite its remote location. We spoke with an old woman who said that her father had told her as a girl that the pagoda had been there for at least three generations. On "Buddha Day" (which I learned is at the end of April, so probably Buddha's birthday), people used to come to the wat from great distances for concerts and fireworks. They said it was a place of great power.

The old woman also told us that there was a secret river passage all the way to the Mekong. When some people refused to believe the story, the monks dumped some coconut shells into the hole, and the next day the shells emerged on the banks of the Mekong.

I left this beautiful place in a highly energized mood, as though I had drunk some of its spiritual power. I had felt this way while visiting Angkor Wat, as I suppose thousands of other tourist have felt. This raised an interesting idea in my mind. We tend to think that this feeling of beauty and energy arises from the architecture and setting of the temples, but Asians might attribute it to a natural energy from certain magical sites. This is the Chinese idea behind feng shui.

So suppose that the ancient Khmers perceived this power at the Angkor site and decided that this magic place was the ideal spot for temples. Thus, the magic energy of Angkor, and of Preah Theat in this case, was there naturally, and the temples only enhanced the power. This theory would explain why most of the wats around Siem Reap are centers for meditation, and why important wats are built on the same sites as ruined temples. For whatever reason, I could feel the beauty of Preah Theat and recommend it as a great site to visit.

You probably need a guide from Kampong Cham, and the narrow track is passable only by motorcycle. You can find my guide, Thol, at the Mekong Hotel or at the bus stop. It is worthwhile to take the trouble to look for him, because he is head and shoulders above the other guides. He showed me a small notebook in which an Israeli tourist named Nimrod Heldmann had written the following:

At last someone who can speak more than two words in English. Thol is very recommended as a guide, very good driver, and knows the place well. If you go to Preah Theat and Preah Srey, be sure to cushion your butt well. Theat and Preah Nokor took about 7 hours, so leave early (don't miss the last ferry at 17:00).

Another reason for going by moto is that Highway 15 is one of those erstwhile tarred Cambodian highways. Bits of surface remain, rendering the middle of the road impassable to all vehicles because of the huge potholes. Vehicles must travel on the edge of the road, and so motorcycles can do the job much better than cars. Even so, Nimrod's point about a cushion is well-taken. If you want to get an early start, you can stay at a guesthouse in Thnal Tutong. That way you can leave for Preah Theat fresh in the morning.

Suoung

Suoung was the center for the rubber industry in colonial days. The Chup Rubber Plantation was huge. I had heard that nowadays the trees have grown old and produce little latex, but I was proved wrong – the industry is thriving. Old plantations are being cut down and new ones planted, not just in Chup, but all over Kampong Cham Province from Stung Trang in the north to Memot in the southeast.

One result of the cutting of the old trees is a secondary industry in wood products: notably firewood and charcoal, since the trees are not large enough or hard enough for furniture or construction. If you see truckloads of small logs being taken from this region towards Vietnam, you can be assured they are not illegal, nor are they part of the foresty industry.

Another product unique to the Suoung area is betel nuts. There are thousands of the tall, thin areca palms that produce the nuts that are sold and chewed around the country. Fortunately, betel nut chewing (and spitting) are activities of the older generation, mostly old women. One can only hope that Cambodian youth do not become hooked on this disgusting habit, the result of which is stains of red juice spit everywhere.

Highway 7 out this way is in very good condition, and the road is full of vehicles with some connection to Vietnam just down the road. This means two things: first, that the road is one of the dustiest in the country, and second, that Suoung is one of the noisiest truck towns in the country. The noise continues for most of the night, making sleep difficult in Suoung.

Because of the truckers and road people, there is also a lively sex and karaoke trade here. There is a unique anti-AIDS billboard in the center of town, showing a slinky prostitute standing on a corner, and a country bumpkin being admonished by a city slicker on a motorbike to be careful about AIDS.

Suoung is a big place, much bigger than I had expected, especially since it is not even named on my Tourism map. That map only lists towns by their district name, and since Suoung is the seat of Tboung Khmum District, that is the name that appears on the map. The town is certainly big enough to merit a map sketch.

There are several guesthouses located just as you enter the town from the west. Some are marked only in Khmer and have several beckoning girls seated out front. Enough said about them. The first one with an English sign is the Apsara, where we stayed for 10,000 riel per night for single rooms. The Tbong Khmum is almost right across the street. And the Psar Sourng is on the same side of the street just a few meters further. There is another, more up-market looking Psar Sourng right in the center of town, but its sign is not in English. We could not even find its name until the next morning, when they put down their awning with their name on it.

A few houses from the Apsara is what appears to be a bar with a big Tiger Beer sign out front. It is called the Koy Bung. I went in at sundown and observed first that there were no Tiger Beer products, not even ABC or Anchor or Crown. They had a wide variety of beers imported from Vietnam, like Bali Hai (Indonesia), King Lion (Vietnam), and Holsten (Gernamy). This was proof of the Vietnamese connection to Suoung. Secondly, girls started to trickle in from upstairs, preparing for later in the evening. So this was just another brothel. I listened to their language and was satisfied that they were all Khmer, but I heard that other places specialized in Vietnamese women.

There are a couple of good places to eat at the center of town, where the road curves to the right at all the petrol stations. On the right side of the street are the evening stalls selling fruit drinks and desserts. All along the street are goofy signs like "Furniture Outlet" or "International Ondulation" ( a hairdressers).

I was looking for the old colonial houses, but could only find one or two rather poor examples. There were several large walls and gates, suggesting that there used to be large houses where now there are only empty lots.

Nokor Knong Krau

Next morning we were off again, this time to find another old temple shown on the Tourism map (also called Banteay Prei Nokor in other publications). We headed east along Highway 7 for about 20 minutes before turning right under an old blue and silver wat arch. Highway 7 was smooth but dusty, and the country road was also in very good condition. In fact, all the roads in this area have been repaired with German money, so travel is easy here. We turned left at Angkor Krao primary school and proceeded through a shady village area for a couple more kilometers. In the cool of the morning, the view of the bright green rice paddies studded with an occasional flashing white egret and a stately wat in the background was a typically beautiful Cambodian sight. Those brilliant colors can somehow not be captured by a camera.

Before reaching the temple, we passed through the earthworks that bordered the ancient baray. or reservoir. The embankments form a square of nearly two kilometers on a side, so the old expanse must have been pretty impressive back in the seventh century, the date my guide told me the temple was built. The old temple or prasat was the usual brick structure and sported huge cracks, indicating that it might not be standing much longer. Indeed, there is not much to say about this typical pre-Angkor structure.

On a humorous note, there is a sign at the entrance saying, "Please come in put your saucers." My guide explained that a colloquial word for shoes, especially flip-flops, is tranaup cheung, which also means 'saucer' in English. Someone obviously looked up tranaup cheung in a dictionary and found the translation as 'saucer'.

Surrounding the rather ordinary wat are a set of seima stones. These stones are commonly used in Cambodian wats to mark the location of magic stones buried around the main temple or vihear. It is these buried stones that give the wat its power. Here at Wat Nokor Knong Krau they had a special festival to dig up the magic stones from the earlier temple. Those stones now form part of the steps to the temple.

If you visit Nokor Knong Krau, you should not miss the other prasat located about 200 meters out in the fields behind the wat. It is in pretty bad condition and smaller than the one at the wat, but still worth a quick visit now that you have arrived at the place. The people at the wat said that there was another similar prasat located about 10 kilometers north of Highway 7 just this side of Ponhea Krek. But they said the road there was unsafe (robbers? mud?) and they would not recommend trying it. So we decided to return to Suoun to catch a taxi on to Memot.

We returned to Highway 7 via another route. We passed along and then through the old baray embankments, where there was actually some water in a sort of moat formed by the earthworks. We emerged in the small market crossroads of Psar Knaa. This would be an equally easy way to approach Nokor Knong Krau. The entire visit took only an hour or two, so I had the entire day ahead of me for traveling on to Memot, my next destination. On the way back to Suoung we hailed a nearly empty pickup, but it was going to Damnae District, north of Memot. As I later learned, the route through Damnae takes you all the way to Chhlong, my destination for the following day. My guide told me that Damnae was heavy Khmer Rouge territory and was heavily mined.

So I returned to Suoung just in time to catch a pickup going all the way to Snuol. I only wanted to go as far as Memot, but decided to go with them and catch as much of Memot as possible at a promised lunch break there. I bid Thol goodbye and promised that I would spread the word of his excellent service to other tourists.

Thol told me his story, which is so typical of Khmers his age that if such stories weren't so tragic, they would be boring after hearing so many similar ones. His parents lived in Kampong Cham, where his mother worked for the Lon Nol government. When the KR took over, she was immediately executed. Young Thol himself was taken out to work in the Psar Knaa, where his aunt still survives. He nearly starved, but survived and returned to Kampong Cham where he now has a family to support on his motodoup wages and is having a hard time making ends meet.

On to Memot

I had bargained for a double seat in the front of the pickup for 24,000 riel. The road was still good and we breezed into the next district of Krek. We reached Ponhea Kraek in 40 minutes and I noted in passing that it was a pretty pathetic place with no chance of having a guest house. A few kilometers further is a major fork in the road, where several passengers got off and boarded a fleet of waiting motodoups. The road off to the right appears to lead to a major border crossing to Vietnam only about 5 kilometers away.

The Krek-Memot area does have a claim to fame. It is the site of a mysterious neolithic bronze-age culture dating sometime after 500 B.C. Over 20 circular earthworks have been found, mostly in rubber plantations (No, there weren't any rubber prehistoric rubber plantations. It's just that the plantation owners reported the finds.) Artifacts such as pottery and stone bracelets have been found around the earthworks, which average 250 meters in diameter. No weapons have been found, and it is unlikely that they were fortifications. The best guess so far seems to be that they were used for drainage purposes.

The road was not quite so smooth for the remainder of the journey to Memot. The area around Dar is a major pepper producing zone. You can see the vines propped up on poles regularly spaced and covered with some light shade. Otherwise the road has little of interest.

We arrived in Memot for the promised lunch stop. The driver asked me to pay him the entire fare for Snuol at that point, and I smelled a rat and didn't come across with the money right away. It turned out that the driver had decided to return to Suoung and I would transfer to another vehicle. We negotiated a three-way deal among myself and the two taxi drivers. This proved difficult, since the new taxi wanted 20,000 to go the rest of the way to Snuol. But I held firm and they finally gave in. But they didn't go down without resistance. At the last minute the new driver wanted to put another passenger in with me, although I had bought my usual double seat. This story is a rather common one, and I relate it mostly because exactly the same thing happened to another foreigner I met in Snuol: the promise of a ride from Suoung to Snuol, a change of mind, a transfer to another vehicle, an argument over the new price, and a hassle with putting an extra person in the seat. So if you are going that way, watch out for that tactic.

Memot is a dump, and I am glad I didn't stay there overnight. My friend's description of Memot as the dustiest town in Cambodia did not hold that day, since it had rained the night before. But the entire town was coated in dark red laterite grime. On a drier day that grime would translate into major dust. It really was a dirty old town. There are two horrible, dark little guest houses behind the Tela station at the taxi stand, but I don't think I would like to stay there. One is called the Mittapheap (= Friendship), but it didn't look too friendly to me.

While waiting at the Tela station for the second vehicle to leave for Snuol, I noticed that the petrol pumps were calibrated in dollars per liter. The number of liters was automatically turned into a price at $0.50 per liter.

A quick tour of the market area revealed a lot of Vietnamese products and an array of weird brands of beer similar to those found in Suoung. The market is built around a sacred Boddhi tree, complete with a small, miserable shrine. Another curiosity was the advertising for a Hard Wood High School. There must be a story behind that name.

The 'Road' To Snuol

In many ways Snuol was the major destination of my entire trip. For years I had seen the odd-sounding name on maps and had built up a yen for going there. It looked as though the trip might be easy – a continuation of the fine Highway 7 for another 50 km or so, which I figured might take an hour or so. However, after only a few minutes into the journey I could see that the situation had changed for the worse.

After zig-zagging through a large rubber plantation after Memot, it became evident that we were not following Highway 7, which in however bad condition would still show traces of heavy use and probably of past tarmac. We were following a narrow little track through the bush that showed no sign of heavy traffic or former tarmac. When the driver stopped to put chains on the tires, I knew we were in for a rough ride. And so we were.

We churned through serious mud at a snail's pace, always under the threat of getting stuck. We met almost no other vehicles, but we did pass a military checkpoint in the middle of nowhere that lifted 3000 riel from the driver. After a couple of hours of deep mud, we suddenly emerged onto a smooth logging road, where we turned right and cruised at 80 km/hr. for the next 22 kilometers (there were clear markers every kilometer, as we went from km 55 to km 77). Such a fine road was indeed a surprise after our sojourn in the deep wilderness. It was almost equally surprising to turn off that road to the left onto the final 10 km to Snuol. This was more what I expected of the old Highway 7 – a few patches of tarmac but mostly deeply eroded and gullied stretches of bone-jarring bouncing around. But after nearly three hours from Memot, we arrived at Snuol.

Snuol - Miles from Nowhere

It was immediately clear that Snuol was my kind of place – the end of the world. The Lonely Planet Guide (I'm surprised they even mentioned such a godforsaken place) got this one right when they called it an "ends-of-the-earth town." But they used the term in a derogatory way, following up the phrase with, "you might find yourself stuck [there] when traveling up-country during the wet season." It never occurred to them that someone might actually choose Snuol as a destination, that someone might actually want to go there, that someone like me might seek out "ends-of-the-earth" towns as a positive experience. In a way, isn't that why people go to Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri as ends-of-the-earth places? Well, Snuol out-ends-of-the-earth them all, and is a wonderful place to hang out if you are of the ends-of-the-earth mindset.

This was sleepiness at its sleepiest, made all the more romantic by a double boulevard from the colonial days when people may have had some reason to go there. Imagine – a divided boulevard and a one-way street in a town where there are no cars to be seen! Well, that's not exactly true, as there were a few broken-down taxis and pickups being tinkered with up by the market, where a few ragamuffin kids were trying with no success to fly kites.

Since Snuol is a road junction where Highway 13 branches off towards Kratie in the north and towards Vietnam only a few kilometers to the south, there are actually guesthouses there: four including the Mittapheap Hotel. I chose the Sok San Guest House because it had an English sign, so I figured they catered more to foreigners on their way to Mondulkiri. It was pretty dark and dreary, but what was I to expect for 8000 riel? Unlike many other towns I visited where the electricity goes off at 10 pm, here they had power from 6 pm to 6 am. However, the fan in my room was so weak that I couldn't actually feel any air at all through the mosquito net, so the all-night electricity was of no benefit to me.

The Mittapheap Hotel might have been a better bet, since you can have perhaps a breezier room up on the second or third floor. To the right of the hotel is a guesthouse called the Monorom, marked only in Khmer. The Srutiet Restaurant a few doors down towards the taxi park is actually a guesthouse as well, but a foreign traveler would never know it because the obscure sign is in Khmer.

However, the Srutiet proved to be the best place to hang out for supper. They uncovered a wide variety of vegetables and let me point to the ones I wanted them to fry up for me in their wok. This was a wise decision; the meal was so delicious, and I was so hungry that I order an additional plate of fried rice with sausages and gobbled it down with gusto. It was here that I met another tourist, an Australian on his way to Mondulkiri, and incidentally the person I mentioned who had the identical taxi experience to mine. We sat eating good grub and drinking beer into the evening in this lost spot on the globe. That is probably my favorite past-time, and I was clearly in my element here. I was reminded of the old Cat Stevens song, "Miles from Nowhere I'll take my stand."

There is another restaurant on the corner, called the Muoy Heang (in English letters). I had planned to have supper there, but when I arrived, the television was blaring some Thai karaoke, so I opted for the quieter Srutiet a few doors away. Another evening, the Muoy Heang might have been pleasant, but I was in no mood to put up with noise in what should be the quiet backwater of Snuol.

I had expected Snuol to be more like Memot. On the map it looks like a major road junc tion only a few kilometers from Vietnam, so I expected a lot of trucks, noise, and traffic. Boy, was I ever wrong! Unlike Memot, the market was full of normal Cambodian products, indicating that Snuol is not a major entry point into Vietnam. I later learned that we had not taken Highway 7 from Memot because it was impassable to all traffic. We had cut through the bush to the logging road that leads all the way to Chhlong, so we had gone a considerable distance out of our way. In fact, I learned that the 3 hour trip was relatively short. The Australian who had come that way said it had taken 3 and a half hours, and other vehicles had gotten stuck for hours in the mud. I had been lucky enough to make it through. That is the main reason there is so little traffic in Snuol.

Next morning I was up early and by 6:30 had found a taxi going to Chhlong. He said he would not be leaving until around 7:30, so I headed back to the Surtiet for a breakfast of noodle soup and coffee. As I sat there, a woman walked by with one of those telltale baskets on her back that indicated she was a minority or chunchiet. I asked the restaurant owner whether there were chunchiet in the area, and she said yes, there were Phnong, Skieng, and Goy. Now I liked Snuol so much that I was looking for an excuse to stay an extra day. A visit to a Skieng or a Goy village might be provide that excuse if only it could be arranged.

Unfortunately, as I sat there contemplating whether or not to stay, the taxi drove up a half-hour early and said they were ready to go. So I was whisked into the taxi without much chance of deciding whether to stay or not, and away we sped towards Chhlong.

After a couple of minutes I heard people speaking English in the back seat. I turned around to find.... Barangs! What a surprise! It turned out they were missionaries visiting a Christianized Skieng village near Snuol. I picked their brains about the Skieng, and learned that around Snuol the Skieng are actually the great majority, while the Khmers are a distant second in population. I could have walked about two km from Snuol to a Skieng village. I kicked myself for not staying in Snuol.

The Skieng apparently are not a very visible minority. They dress like the Khmer and most can speak good Khmer. They don't go to school simply because there are no schools to attend. They have even requested the government to provide a teacher, and they will build the school. But I guess the idea of the Hun Sen school has not made it out to this remote minority area yet.

The only visible sign that distinguishes the Skieng from the Khmer is a rather subtle difference in their style of housing. The thatched roof is more rounded and shaggier, or as the missionaries put it, the houses look like Khmer houses in need of a haircut. You can see some of these houses along the road to Chhlong.

The Skieng are not common out in Mondulkiri, where the Phnong are more prevalent. So Snuol would be an interesting place to visit a minority not found in the other more touristed spots. Rattanakiri, and to a lesser extent Mondulkiri, are becoming spots for 'minority tourism'. Tourists are taken by moto out to minority villages, where they go through a certain well-rehearsed drill that is becoming more and more like the contrived and artificial visits to hill tribe villages found in over-touristed Thailand.

What I am driving at is that here within a short walk from Snuol you can visit authentic minorities that are not found elsewhere in Cambodia and have not been corrupted by the tourist trade. You can be the first to corrupt them!

Chhlong – Colonial Decay

The taxi to Chhlong costs 10,000 riel and takes less than two hours because the logging road is so good. The entire area has been pretty much logged out and is a pity to behold because of the few dead trees that remain along the road. The road is not marked on any maps that I know of. Lonely Planet calls it a new road, and that may be the case, but since the logging has ceased and the company that built the road has closed, there is almost no traffic on this desolate stretch. Without proper maintenance it may revert to bush rather quickly.

About 11 km from Chhlong there is a junction. The road to the left goes down to Dambae District and might be an interesting adventure. After the junction the road into Chhlong becomes a terrible mudhole where you might get stuck. Clearly the logging company is not using this stretch, nor are they maintaining it.

The road ends spectacularly and abruptly at the gate of the logging company. It is clear that the road was built for logging only, with no consideration for any other sort of transportation needs. From there you snake your way off to the right to reach the taxi stand at Chhlong. The taxi stand is only 100 meters from the boat landing (everyone here, including Lonely Planet, calls it the 'port', but port is the last word I would use to describe it). But if you arrive as I did at 9 am, you have probably already missed the boat to Phnom Penh from Kratie, which stops around 7:30. However, the boat from Phnom Penh to Kratie stops around noon, so you could continue your journey up river the same day.

If you are coming the other way (i.e. from PP through Chhlong to Snuol), you would arrive in Chhlong around noon and catch an afternoon taxi going to Snuol. But Chhlong is such a charming old colonial backwater, it would be well worth your while to overnight there. There are two guesthouses right near the taxi stand/'port', one one either side of the road. They are both quite comfortable. I stayed at the smaller Heng Heng on the right and was quite happy there, but other people have recommend the larger, newer, unnamed one on the left. People refer to it as Moet Samoeun's, the name of the owner. Both places cost 10,000 per night.

This area of port/taxi stand/guesthouses is in the middle of a large plantation of koki trees, the tall tropical dipterocarps often planted in front of wats and often used to construct the canoes used for racing at Water Festival. Some Forestry official has gone berserk and has posted a large blue sign identifying each and every tree in the area, and there are hundreds of them. You can plainly see that neighboring trees are of the same species, but there is a sign on each of them stating its Khmer name, its Latin scientific name (hopea odorata), and the family. If you look around you will see a few much larger trees of a different species, labeled dipterocarpus alatus. After having a laugh at the signs, take in the natural beauty of all these tropical hardwoods. They make this section of Chhlong a truly beautiful spot. Near the river's edge there is also a reddish Chinese temple dedicated to Kwan Ying, goddess of mercy. It is in an ideal setting among the huge trees but still overlooking the wide vista of the Mekong.

The center of Chhlong is another kilometer down the river. The road turns right after the wat, but you can continue to walk along the eroded bank to the old colonial buildings. There is one gigantic old colonial mansion in particular worthy of attention, although it now appears unused with the exception of a Funcinpec banner out front. You can see that Chhlong used to be an important place from the fact that the streets were once paved and still have the curbs. How many cities in Cambodia can boast curbs along their streets?

There is a string of old buildings with arches and run-down colonial finery. The most ornate of these has the date 1922 inscribed at the top, an indication of the heyday of the place. The other buildings in the row, including the present-day post office, look as though they were all built at the same time.

I walked through the uninteresting market and back along street two (of three). The only points of interest there were a large Chinese school, a goofily-named NGO, and the wat. The Chinese school, together with the red temple mentioned above, was further evidence of a large Chinese community in Chhlong. The wat is new but rather ordinary, although it has an overgrown old stupa that appears to be centuries old, but upon further inspection, bears the inscribed date 1947. The NGO is named Saving AIDS and Cambodia International Workers for Human Rights. I guess that covers a lot of territory to appeal to all sorts of donors.

After an afternoon, I went out again later in the afternoon. I was immediately greeted by a local English teacher named Seng Ratanawho wanted of course to practice his English with me. I obliged, thinking that I might tap him for some information about Chhlong. It was a pretty fair trade-off. He told me that Chhlong was in an economic depression due to the closing of the logging mill. He took me to see his school and his family, and then we went all the way down to the other end of town to his relative's house in Chnee Village, where the Chhlong River enters the Mekong. There is another nice pagoda there, called Wat Preah Chan Rea Chea, that is 54 years old. This pagoda, along with the one in town, was the scene of a lot of killing by the Khmer Rouge. We sat along the Chhlong River at sunset and watched the moon rise. It's a nice area, with more big trees similar to those near the 'port'.

It was in Chnee village that I learned why there is no vehicle traffice through Chhlong. There is no bridge across the Chhlong River, and so no cars can travel along this side of the Mekong. Apparently there used to be a wooden road bridge built in 1968 some two km up the Chhlong River at Kampong Srey. But in 1973 the Americans bombed the bridge, and there has been no road along this way ever since. There are plans, however, to build a new bridge in 2002.

We walked back into town and visited the house of Ratana and his family. It was a rather wacky conversation in which I caught glimpses of that bush mentality that Claude Levi-Strauss so unpolitically correctly termed 'the savage mind.' One example was a request by Ratana's nearly blind aunt to bring back medicine the next time a go to the States. This with no idea of diagnosis or prescription. Eye medicine is eye medicine, no matter what the ailment.

A second example of bush thinking occurred two or three times when we tried to list things, such as all the provinces of Cambodia. Ratana just started naming Provinces at random and quickly bogged down, while my Western mind automatically went around the geographical areas in a systematic attempt to encompass all the provinces.

The third example of the bush mindset – and this appears to be typically Cambodian, was when Ratana showed me all his certificates and stated that as a teacher trainer, he had no teacher training certificate. Since I worked for a teacher training institution in Battambang, perhaps I could sign and send him one of our certificates. I have decided to make my mark in the field of sociology by introducing the concept of "The Certificate Mind."

We then proceeded to the eateries at the 'port', where the few customers were getting drunk on a local brew called wo pieh, made from some sort of vine or creeper. It wasn't long before one old guy was getting obnoxious, and not much longer after that before he had to be carried out. But the people were very pleasant and with a full moon overhead along the Mekong, we spent a very lovely evening indeed.

The Banks of the Mekong

Next morning, Ratana's brother showed up offering his services as a moto-driver to take me to my next destination, Krouch Chmar, some 40kms west of Chhlong along the Mekong. Everyone I asked said the road was fine, but there was no taxi service. This is because there are other rivers flowing into the Mekong where bridges have either been destroyed or are being reconstructed. We had to cross a couple of streams by ferries, while in other places there were narrow structures wide enough only for motos. As a result, we did not see a single car or truck all morning. The situation may improve in the next year or two, because we saw a couple of bridges nearing completion. There may be car traffic this way by the end of 2002.

The 'road' to Krouch Chmar is almost continuously built up with a monotonous line of houses and small businesses stretching for the entire 40 km. It is not an interesting journey. But at least the road was passable, and there were a lot of very big, if ordinary, wats along the way. One of the first ones had a unique tier of small arches around the top, what I think one would call a clerestory if it appeared on a medieval cathedral. Several of the villages along the way had groves of large koki trees similar to those in Chhlong, but of course not so fastidiously labeled.

There were a lot of Cham (moslem) villages along the way, with their concomitant mosques. Many of the mosques were very old; one was marked 1914. We crossed on a ferry at Prek Ponroa beside a big new bridge over which people were walking (but not yet open to vehicle traffic). While waiting for the ferry in the Cham village, one traveller made a joke about Osama bin Laden that only highlighted to me how bin Laden had successfully put an Islam-verses-America spin on the situation, despite American protestations that the U.S. is not anti-Islam. Oh, well, I was away from the world of CNN for five days and was thankfully totally out of touch with the news and the situation in Afghanistan.

After passing from Kratie Province into Kampong Province, the fairly good road suddenly ended. We had to cut over to the riverbank and plow through slippery-slidey mud for the last 20 km. This was horrible. The moto driver was less than careful, and it didn't take him long to have an accident in which I came off the bike and gashed my leg. Thereafter, I chose to get off and walk at all the potentially dangerous. This decision proved to be time-consuming, as I ended up walking more than half the time as the road deteriorated. We tediously crept along, riding 50-100 meters at a time, interspersed by walking through the more muddy spots.

We knew we were approaching Krouch Chmar when we arrived at Sway Kleng, site of a large mosque with a huge old minaret. The town of Sway Kleng had a few shops and it looked as though we were nearing civilization. A few minutes later, my moto driver pointed out the district headquarters (Sala Srok) of Krouch Chmar, but there was still no indication that we had arrived anywhere. Next to the office was a large and beautiful old wat – actually two wats, and old, ornate one and a new and surprisingly tasteful white-and-dark-green one. But still no sign of a town.

So exhausted and bleeding, I finally arrived at the market of Krouch Chmar. It had taken three and a half hours to cover the 40 km, and in fact about two and a half to cover the final 20 km. And what is there to see, having arrived at the prized destination of Krouch Chmar? Nothing!. There is one arched wall of an old building along the river, but otherwise the place is dead. Only a few people whiling away the late morning around the market, but not much activity. And clearly no guest house.

What to do? I might have found a place to stay overnight, but there was nothing to do here. I didn't feel like continuing the moto journey, but decided I had no other choice. So after a short rest, I found another (safer) moto driver who took me another 10 km along the river to a small ferry crossing over to the larger town of Stung Trang (not to be confused with Stung Treng up the Mekong). From there, they said, there was a road into Kampong Cham and I could take a taxi the rest of the way. Fortunately the road was drier along this stretch, and I didn't have to get off once. It was quite a relief to arrive at the ferry crossing and to see a real town on the other side of the river. The ferry was just ready to cast off, so I quickly boarded and we sped across the Mekong to civilization.

Stung Trang

Stung Trang District is the birthplace of Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was born in the village of Bos Knau. I asked some kids in Stung Trang where Hun Sen was from, but they didn't even know he originally came from their district. I guess that the Hun Sen personality cult hasn't reached Stung Trang yet, although I am sure it will in time.

Stung Trang is a real town, with two-storied shops, restaurants, karaoke bars, etc. Everything except a guesthouse. I easily managed to find a place to stay upstairs from an old Chinese woman's shop, where I spent a comfortable night on one of those Cambodian cots (i.e. camp-bed) with a mosquito net. The room opened onto a balcony overlooking the Mekong, from where I could see the moon rise while lying in bed.

There isn't much to see or do in Stung Trang. But there was a thunderstorm brewing, and I sat drinking a beer along the river watching the sunset colors penetrated by a rainbow and the occasional bolt of lightning on the horizon. For such a dump of a town, it was a very enjoyable experience. A bunch of kids clustered around me, but instead of asking for English lessons, they gave me Khmer lessons. They told me how to describe in Khmer all the terms for kids flying kites (bung hah klaing), including all the parts of the kite and all the terms for ways to crash the kites, of which there were many.

All along the Mekong I had observed kids flying kites, apparently the primary sport of the region. The kites are made from used plastic bags and don't fly very well. In fact, it is a minor miracle when one of them actually gets off the ground. But the kids persist in failure after failure, until somehow a kite finally gets into the air.

I asked about other places along the river, especially Krouch Chmar, where I had just been. Their answer surprised me. Krouch Chmar was well known to them for its ghosts. "Too many ghosts there, and they come up and slap you." They made faces, sticking out their tongues and waving their arms. So it would seem that Cambodian ghosts follow some of the same stereotypes as Western ghosts. And speaking of ghosts, Stung Trang has its requisite mad woman roaming the streets. She is unique in one sense – she constantly kicks one of those feathered toet sey things that the lads are always standing around kicking the the air. The kids said she used to be normal, had a family, etc., but one day the ghosts came up and slapped her in the face, and she has been crazy ever since.

The very good road out of town, heading perpendicular to the river, goes up a hill to a new but rather forlorn market. There are no side streets – just the T-junction of the road along the river and the road up the hill. I walked to the very ordinary-looking wat and went inside to see if there were any interesting wall paintings. In fact, the paintings had been done by one of the best and most realistic artists I have seen in Cambodia. In the Buddha life-story episodes, there are a couple of scenes of topless women, and these were painted in a style comparable to the best Mexican black-silk paintings.

Wat Chey Kiri

The Tourism map I was using shows an old prasat called Phnum Han Chey located a few kilometers down the river towards Kampong Cham. Almost no one I asked had ever heard of Han Chey, but they knew there was a prasat out there, at Wat Chey Kiri, which I believe is named after the common albizzia tree which shades so many Cambodian markets.

I had originally planned to visit the site the next day, on the way into Kampong, but since I had the entire afternoon at my disposal, I decided to go out there immediately and to take the boat into Kampong Cham the next morning. It turned out to be a good decision, because the main road out of town doesn't go that way at all. In fact, the road out to the prasat was much worse even than the one I had taken to Krouch Chmar. Indeed, in most places it was totally impassable. There were little trails twisting around village huts, or narrow tracks on the very edge of the steep banks of the Mekong. There was ofetn a small but very real danger of slipping and plunging down the bank into the drink.

The trip was less than 10 km, but it took ages to get out the the hill on top of which stands Wat Chey Kiri. We walked the final kilometer up the hill to the pagoda, which is apparently a popular picnic site on weekends. This being Thursday, however, I had the place to myself. The wat has lots of colorful statues and shrines to various gods, and is scenically located on the flat top of the high hill overlooking a bend in the Mekong on three sides. No wonder it is a popular picnic spot!

The old prasat seems to be only a secondary attraction, hidden behind the main vihear of the wat. It is of the ancient brick variety. The monks could not give a date, but affirmed that it was much earlier than Angkor Wat. That is a pretty safe statement with the brick temples. I took the required photographs and moved on.

The monks pointed down the hill where, they said, the long flight of steps led to another prasat. So down we went. Near the bottom, years of flooding and riverbank erosion had destroyed and twisted the steps to look like an earthquake zone. But they were passable. At the bottom, we turned left and walked along rows of Chinese graves to the other prasat, much more lonely and desolate than the one on top of the hill. This was another rather uninteresting structure, but the material of which is was made was strange to me. It was made of large blocks of black stone that had small holes a bit like the pumice of laterite, but it was not red and coarse like laterite. It did not seem to be sandstone or limestone, either. I took my last picture, but it was hard to capture the setting, out there in the open overlooking the wide windswept stretch of the Mekong.

Wat Chey Kiri may be reachable from the Kampong Cham side, but I didn't see any roads leading that way. The best advice I can give to those who would wish to visit the place is to go to Stung Trang by boat in the dry season and then moto back to the temple. Actually, you should be able to see the lower black prasat from the boat as it rounds the bend of the river.

Crazy Transportation

Next morning I headed back to Phnom Penh, faced with two options, or so I gathered. I could either take a taxi at 6:00 or the boat at 7:00. . This is not the boat from Kratie; rather it is a smaller speedboat that originates, so they said, in Krouch Chmar, and goes only as far as Kampong Cham, where you could catch a car or another boat to Phnom Penh. I decided to have a leisurely breakfast and take the boat. But around 6:15 the boat pulled inI asked whether I had time for breakfast, and everyone said, "sure". So I had some noodles and coffee and headed back to the boat. People were boarding, so I went up to my room and collected my bags. By the time I got downstairs again, the boat had just pulled out. I had literally 'missed the boat'.

The good news was that the lone taxi was still sitting at the crossroads. I was able to jump in, and we left almost immediately. The road looked good, and I figured this would be a piece of cake. Wrong again! Not far out of town the road became a sea of mud. We inched along, getting stuck several times and having to push our way out, or diverting around especially bad places on small detours constructed by families who then collect toll from the drivers. The drivers often just toss 500 riel notes out the window into the mud for the locals to scramble for. It was rough going.

Moreover, we did not appear to be heading south towards Kampong Cham. Rather, the road went west, and on a couple of occasions we turned north instead of south. It soon became clear that we were not going to Kampong Cham at all. But I figured that if we were going to Phnom Penh, sooner or later we would have to cut down to the tarred Highway 7. On and on we went, zig-zagging through huge rubber plantations, getting stuck in the mud occasionally, and I had no idea where we were. I had some idea of location when we passed through Chamcar Leu, the district headquarters. Finally we hit the tar road, but instead of turning right to Phnom Penh, we turned left! It turned out that the tar road was not Highway 7 at all, but Highway 6 going north to Kampong Thom. We were still 30 km north of Highway 7. But at least I knew where we were, and from here on the road would be the smooth and familiar route to Phnom Penh. And I had seen another slice of the Cambodia Less Traveled that I had not bargained for.

We reached Phnom Penh after a total trip of five hours, much longer that I'd imagined. I had figured we would make Kampong Cham in less than an hour, and then proceed to Phnom Penh in another 2 hours. So we had wasted about two hours slogging through the mud and snaking through the plantations. But I guess that is the only way to go to and from Stung Trang. If there is a road to Kampong Cham at all. it is not passable in the rainy season.

On Balance

My assessment of the entire trip through Suoung, Snoul, Chhlong, and Stung Trang? Very positive. The two highlights were the end-of-the-world backwater of Snuol and the romantically colonial Chhlong, and I give my two thumbs up for a visit to either of them. The 'lowlights' were the road along the south bank of the Mekong and the road trip back to Phnom Penh. Both of those could be avoided by taking the boat. It is therefore quite easy to make the loop through Snuol and Chhlong if you make sure you get on the boat and avoid the mudbaths along the Mekong. You could even make the trip in two and a half days: one day to Snuol, another to Chhlong, and a third morning back to Phnom Penh by boat.

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