One of my personal favourite legs of the ‘Madeline does Cambodia’ tour of 2008 has to be the 3 or 4 days spent in Kampot. What an utterly delightful place to laze away a few days – or weeks as some fellow travellers had. Some travellers have been lazing away in Kampot for so long they’ve ended up opening bars and guesthouses and calling themselves ex-pats! A really pretty town with plenty of colonial architecture remaining and a beautiful riverfront with stunning sunset views of Bokor Mountain and National Park.
Now, anyone who knows Madeline well wil know that she is far from lazy and her worst idea of a holiday would be sitting on her arse, sipping a drink and reading a book. Oh no – Madeline is one of the most adventure seeking, enthusiastic, active people in my address book so it was no shock (ahem!) to hear her jump at the chance to pay for a 2-day jungle trek up the infamous Bokor Mountain.
Bokor is famous for its abandoned French colonial town’s remains at the top, comprising a casino, church, hotel and various other deserted buildings, made all the more eery by the heavy mist which swamps them making them endlessly vanish and reappear. I believe the site at the top has recently been sold to developers so the road up the mountain is closed to tourist groups. The only way up is no walk. Did I mention that Madeline was the active traveller type? And did I mention that walking happens to be her favourite activity of all time? I remember one particular New Year’s eve when she thoroughly enjoyed walking the long way home from a boat party in Chelsea – hmmmmm, remember? Anyhoo, luckily (for us both!) there were 3 more active traveller types who were interested in the trek. Luckily (for Madeline) one was a squaddie and another a paramedic. Luckily (for me) there were 3 more people to listen to Madeline’s moans (which started approximately 19 minutes into the 2-day trek!)
It was hard work. We were led by a ranger wearing flipflops and carrying a rusty looking gun which had seen better days and even he broke a sweat. I tried not to dwell on why we might need a ranger with a gun but it became a more positive way to occupy my mind as my thoughts turned to thinking up ways to lose Madeline in the jungle. Perhaps it was to protect us from illegal loggers (much of Cambodian’s forested areas are being lost in this way as timber is a lucrative way to make money), or perhaps wild animals (you may scoff at this but the Lonely Planet reports of a 3-legged tiger aptly named Tripod prowling the jungle), or perhaps it was for putting people out of their own misery (people who had blindly over-estimated their own stamina and fitness levels when signing up to a 2 day trek UP a mountain).
Despite sweating out of pores I never knew I had I did really enjoy the trek. We only stopped for lunch and to appease Madeline: “Are we nearly there yet?” “Can we get a truck?” “Where’s the road?” “I’m going to look up my definition of FLAT!” and as luck would have it, as we reached the road God sent us all a huge blessing in the form of a large shiny black truck waiting to carry Madeline the last kilometres away to the top. In fact, after another 30 minutes of fast-paced trekking the rest of us welcomed a lift up the final part of the hill as well.
At the top, when the mist parted, the view of Kampot and Kep below us was fantastic. I wouldn’t say it was completely worth the hours of walking and climbing but it came close. What did make it all worth while was the abandoned hill station which made us (read me) feel like me’d just walked onto the film set of a spooky movie! We stood not more than 100 metres away from the old casino building and could see it crystal clearly before it vanished completely in a big cloud of heavy mist.
Madeline’s moaning took longer to begin on our descent (“I don’t mind going down hill”) despite trudging through rain for a while in the morning. To begin with we walked down part of the closed road and through countryside (“Now this is my idea of a trek”) which was little more than a gentle slope. However, we were soon climbing over boulders, and down steep slippery declines.
For the last3 ½ hours our guide informed us we only had one hour more to walk before we would reach the tranquillity and coolness of a waterfall and lake we could swim in and soak off the last two days worth of sweat. This false information riled Madeline quite severely (“I just want the truth”) and the last 3 ½ hours were not fun at all. Our toes hurt from being pushed forward in our trainers for so long due to going down hill and after professing her delight and ability at walking downhill, even Mads was wishing for an incline, just to break up the walk and ease the pressure on the tips of her toes. A few of us, me included, suffered a few leeches on the way down as we had to wade through some water and the squaddie took a tumble which resulted in a sprained ankle (although I think it was all an act to get someone else to carry his bag) but other than that no harm was done.
We reached the bottom finally and all enjoyed soaking in the dirty but cool river water at the base, and then we returned to the guesthouse, very tired and very relieved that we had survived the ordeal without meeting any illegal, machete wielding loggers or Tripod. We rewarded ourselves with a few beers!
