Elephants, jungle and Buong people

As iI tried to write this already third time and because so much happened in between I will try to shorten this part of our journey into fewer posts.

Another minibus packed with people and cargo of all kind brought us from Kratie to Sen monorom. Our mission was to see the elephants, go for a short trek and sleep at one of the sorounding villages. 

We decided to stay in bungalows a bit off from main square, which was not the best idea considering we wanted to do start trek already next day. After a good meal at restaurant of an australian guy who moved to the jungle town because he fell in love with a manager of a guesthouse where he stayd during his travel we also decided to ask him to organise 2 days trek for us. All gueshouses seem to have almost the same prices, which are quite high (30$ per day per person) considering how much money goes to the locals actualy doing the job. If we knew earlier renting a motorbike and going direct to them would be a better option.

The treking started with a good breakfast and bad coffee. Altough this area is also a coffee producer western coffee culture did not really came to them. So beware when having a coffee - only good one i had in Sen monorom was at coffe Phka, where they have a help from swedish friends that teached them how to make good cofffe and great cakes!

A good ride with motorbikes for 20 minutes and we were ready to go in the jungle. Actualy we found out jungle as we expected it is long gone in this area, it is more a highly exploited forest with ocasional field of mountain rice in between. We saw monkeys, spiders, scorpions... And we had a nice swim under the waterfall combined with fishing. After that we had lunch and we went slowly to the Buong village. A place where they only got electricity 3 years ago was quite another world. Kids, actually a lot of them, pigs, dogs, cats... It seems that they all like to reproduce a lot in these places:) and they all live in perfect symbiosis, with chicken and pigs wandering around in kitchen and with cats and dogs eating the rest of our nice dinner cooked by our guides wife. 

Scorpion on the way

Guide's daughter

Sleeping in hammocks

Next day it all started very early - around 4 the roosters started to sing following the kids after an hour. We were going to have a meeting with an elephants today! Soon after breakfast another group arrived and we went to meet them in the forest. Our was a young one, 37 years old Baku. He was great, very patient with 2 tourists on his back. As he was a bit dirty after an hour of walking we also cleaned him in the small river next to the hut where we had our lunch in the middle of the rice fields.

It was fun, but maybe just a disclamer for future travelers: if you take one afternoon and rent a bike to sorround villages you might get everything much cheaper without guest house commision. Just go to the village and there are signs for homestay and elephant tours.

Where we stayed:

Happy elephant

Australian guy