Sen Monorom

20 - 23 March

I'll leave the ride to Mondulkiri to Phil to describe later on, for me it was a trip best forgotten. What I will say is that it was long and uncomfortable. We were headed to the Nature Lodge at Sen Monorom as the Mondulkiri province boasted a unique landscape and cooler climate. As we drove up and over the hill, the dense jungle fell away and rolling hills appeared. Oh God, I thought. I've dragged Phil half-way round the world into the most remote province of Cambodia to a place that looks like Martinborough! The guidebook was right - it was unique landscape - compared to the rest of Cambodia but, apart from the intensely red earth (which judging from the colour of my feet four days later, I believe the Cambodians could make a fortune selling to body builders as fake tan pigment), the landscape was very New Zealand. The critters, however, were not.

We settled into our cabin at the Nature Lodge to discover that the bed was damp at the bottom and the pillows were covered with white flecks which looked suspiciously like dandruff. We glanced around at the inch wide gaps in the floorboards, at the daylight through the planks in the walls and the mosquito net which almost covered the bed. We of course are prepared for such things and cracked out our super-duper-permethrin-embedded-uber-hygenic-kiwi-wuss sleep sheets and our clothespegs for sealing and anchoring mozzie nets. We checked out our quaint outdoor bathroom and then headed over to the main restaurant cum common area. By this time, I had a splitting headache from the trip and Phil was feeling decidedly seedy so we retired to bed. We lay there for some hours, Phil running a temperature and up and down to the bathroom (times where you could really do with an indoor variety) and me staring at the livestock crawling across the mosquito net over our heads wondering how the hell we could get out of here if we needed to get Phil to a doctor. Bathroom trips were best made quickly as we would be dive-bombed by enormous flying creatures.

At 4 in the morning it rained heavily - on the end of our bed.

By morning, Phil's temperature had returned to normal, the bugs on the net had all either died in the night or skulked back to whence they came and I showered in the fresh morning air. From the hammock on the porch of our cabin could be seen a misty view of the hills and valleys. We dressed and went to breakfast.

We tend to meet and get talking to a lot of people at breakfast and today it was an Australian woman and her Spanish partner who lived in Barcelona. They were on route through Cambodia, as we were, and also through Vietnam before heading to Australia. Between Phil's stomach upset and our new friend's flu, we all spent a fair amount of time lounging around the lodge's common area over the next 3 days chatting, neither of us really able to go trekking or to the waterfalls as we'd planned. They shared some insider tips for our trip to Barcelona and I was able to practise my Spanish. We agreed to share a taxi back to Phnom Penh and avoid the nightmare trip we'd all experienced coming up here.

Despite my horror at the array of oversized insects and arachnids who all seemed to be steroidily super-aggressive, Nature Lodge fauna also included 4 horses, myriad chickens, a beautiful and enormous German Shepherd and a pregnant cat with her two grown sons.
(a grown son)
The place was also home to many butterflies, frogs and our gecko friends.

The following photo conjures way too many 'horse walked into a bar jokes'.

This horse is a mare named Ginger, she is very helpful when playing pool - she leaned her snout over the table and rolled one of my balls into the corner pocket. Ginger was more pleasant than her male counterpart who bit our Spanish friend on the elbow.

Phil gradually got better over the three days and we became more canny about spreading rain ponchos over our bed before the downpours began. We had at least one good downpour a day accompanied by super rapid lightning that looked like there was a malfunctioning fluoro tube somewhere in the distance and usually lasted several hours.