Ban Lung - Cambodia

We left for our trip to Ban Lung around 6am after waiting an hour for the bus to collect us, we should have left at 5am.  We were told that we would be in Ban Lung for around 3pm-ish.  After being on the bus for what felt like an eternity, we were told to get off along with one other westener, it was already about 3pm by this point.  We were then asked to follow some guy who took us to a minibus.  The driver of the minibus didn't seem very pleased to be taking us to Ban Lung and the other lady to Kratie, but we were soon clambering over goodness knows what to get into the back seat.  We drove for another two hours (in the wrong direction) to Kratie to drop the lady off.  We were then told we would need to get onto another bus to get us to Ban Lung.  This one wasn't leaving until 6.30pm so we went for some dinner.  We discussed just calling it a day and finding some accommodation in Kratie since we were planning to visit there anyway, but since we had already spent the whole day travelling we decided just to keep on trucking. We walked back round to the bus station for 6.30pm but were told that the bus wasn't full yet and that they might not leave at all unless more people came. Thankfully, there was enough people wanting to head that way and we set off at 7pm.  The road to Ban Lung was the worst I've ever been on, it didn't help that there was zero suspension in the minibus.  After being jiggled about for another couple of hours, a lot of the passengers got off.  We then managed to lie down on the seats and get some sleep.  We finally arrived in Ban Lung at 1am! Nine and a half hours later than we were told we would.  After having to wake someone up to let us into the accommodation we brushed our teeth and hit the sack.

We had a bit of a lie in the next morning as we were both understandably shattered from our hell journey the day before.  We had a late breakfast at our accommodation and then decided to rent some bicycles and head to the crater lake which was about 5km away.  We were given "good bikes" for our journey but about two meters in my chain fell off which almost made me land in the ditch.  Back I went to get myself another "good bike".  The first part of the journey was quite flat but it wasn't long before we were heading up our first hill.  This was when we realised just how "good" the bikes were.  Mine felt as though it was stuck in the highest gear and Kay's in first! You can't really complain when they cost $1 to rent for the full day.  The road to the lake was full of steep hills and we actually had to get off our bikes a few times to push! Showing our fitness level here, or lack there of.  Once we made it to the lake we went for a wee walk around some of it.  They think the lake was created by a meteor as it is a perfect circle. We decided to jump into the lake to cool down after our cycle.  We cycled back to our accommodation and had some dinner.  We had spoken with a lady via email about booking a jungle trek for the following day/night.  She came down to our accommodation to speak to us about our options. She was the loveliest lady and we decided we would do a two day/one night trek where we would stay with a family in the jungle. We spent the night packing and had an early night in preparation for our big trek the next day.

We were picked up early the next morning for our trek but ended up sitting about a bit while they organised everything.  There were people of all ages going on treks that day, even a 70ish year old woman who was doing a 5 day(!) trek! Good on her, I hope I'm that fit at 70.  We were the only ones doing two days and so we set off with our guide in the oldest car on the planet.  At one point he had to put down my window so, pulled over, got a wrench out and used that as a handle, since there was no longer one there.  He later told us the car was a gift from his god father and so he couldn't get rid of it.  I suspect he spends all his earnings on rice wine but maybe it truly is sentimentality that's making him hold onto the old banger.  We drove for a short while and our guide pulled over to buy some red bull and some surgical masks for Kay and I. I, being a diabetic, obviously declined the red bull but the surgical mask came in very handy with the really dusty roads.  He was calling it red snow as the dust was everywhere, including a thick layer on every roof.  We arrived at a small village to start our trek and pick up our ranger.  We needed to have one ranger, who knew the jungle, and one English speaking guide with us.  The ranger had a huge backpack with him and when he weight it, it was 19kg(!!). We had our own things, sleeping bag liner, flip flops, bikini, camera etc, our hammock for the night and 3 litres of water.  They probably only weighed about 5kg max and that was more than enough.  I have no idea how he walked so far with such a heavy bag.  The guides bag was around 13kg too! We walked until lunch time, taking short breaks every 45 minutes or so to have water and a quick sit down.  The trek wasn't particularly hard but the 35 degree heat was a killer.  We had a filling lunch of eggs and bread and then set off again.  We had two dogs with us the whole time too, one puppy and one slightly older dog.  They probably did ten times the distance we did that day as they were constantly running ahead and then coming back again.  We had to walk over some fallen trees a couple of times to get over some rivers which was a bit scary.  We didn't see a huge amount of wildlife but we did see a massive poisonous spider...eeekk! 

After lunch we were told by our guide that he had received a phone call from the village we were meant to be staying at, they told him that they were having a celebration that night and they didn't want any outsiders there.  He also explained that there would be a lot of drinking at the celebration which would make it difficult for him to translate for us.  We weren't 100% sure we fully believed him but felt we had no option but to agree to changing the plan, and sleeping in the jungle instead. I wasn't overly bothered as this had been my preferred option anyway.  We just decided between us that we would speak to the lovely lady we booked with when we got back.  We paid more to do the home stay and so if we weren't getting to do it, we wanted some of our money back.

We carried on our trek for another few hours until we arrived at our camp for the night.  It was a beautiful wee spot next to a river with pools.  We went for a quick dip to cool down before dinner.  It was then I realised why our rangers bag was so heavy.  He started pulling out pots, pans, knives, lots of vegetables and meat, like a mary poppins bag.  While we were doing our trek, our guide made us some lovely cups out of bamboo and so we had some (very strong) rice wine aka whisky while we chopped up some vegetables.  Our ranger made us a beautiful meal of rice, vegetables and chicken and also a vegetable soup which he made by putting all the ingredients into a piece of bamboo and put it over the fire.  He explained that you didn't need to add any water as it would come out from the bamboo.  We set up our hammocks after dinner and had an early night, which was a good thing as the temperature dropped quite drastically through the night and myself and Kay were both waking up every hour or so during the night with the cold.  

The next morning we woke to some lovely hot coffee and breakfast.  Our breakfast consisted of noodles, vegetables, lizards eggs and frogs (I didn't partake)! Lovely! We set off after breakfast for another day of hiking.  We arrived at the rangers village around lunch time and had lunch and a refreshing cold beer with them.  It was here that we left the ranger and the beautiful dogs.  Myself, Kay and the guide left in the car and went to another village so that he could show us a bit of village life.  

Once we had returned to Ban Lung we collected our rucksacks and spoke the lady who owns the company with her husband.  She refunded us straight away, without us having to ask, once we told her that we hadn't been able to do the trek we had originally booked.  Although we couldn't understand what she was saying to our guide, we could tell that she was furious with him.  So, I think our suspicions were correct and he just couldn't be bothered taking us to the home stay.  We both thoroughly enjoyed or trek none the less and our time in Ban Lung.  We moved accommodation that night to a slightly nicer hotel as, although the other one was very cheap, it was also very noisy.  We just wanted somewhere clean and quite to rest our heads and our legs for our journey to Kratie the following day.