Preah Vihear 2002 - part one

Sokhom and his trusty Daelim moto next to a deforested area of Preah Vihear province

March 2002 marked my eighth trip to Cambodia since my adventures began in 1994. One of the highlights was my first visit to the mountaintop temple of Preah Vihear. I'll share with you my scribbles from that time together with some of the photos that I've just put onto disc some six years later.

Prasat Kraham Chhouk temple en route to Tbeng Meanchey

These girls rather shyly posed for a photo near Prasat Kraham Chhouk

Preah Vihear 2002 - part one
As the road from Siem Reap to Kompong Thom had improved according to reports, I chose the more comfortable Camry share-taxi option rather than the usual pick-up truck and after successfully concluding negotiations for the two front seats, left a little before 7am. An hour later, I jumped out at Spean Praptos for a few photos of the ancient Angkorean bridge as we waited for a passenger before the rain began to fall, which when added to a few overnight showers, turned the road into a quagmire in places. At one spot the traffic was reduced to a crawl as trucks and taxis slid and careened their way through axle-deep mud. With the main bridge at Stoung under repair, a diversion took us through someone's garden and we finally arrived in Kompong Thom city centre after a four-hour trip.

As arranged by e-mail, my trusted friend, fellow adventurer and moto-driver, Sokhom, was waiting to greet me. After a plate of noodles at the Arunras restaurant, we stopped at his home to pack my daysack, collect our hammocks and mozzie nets and a brief reunion with his wife Sroy and daughter Kunthea, before our mid-day departure. Sokhom's moto is an old one with suspect suspension and an uncomfortable seat but its never let us down on all our previous trips, though this one, a round-trip of some 500 kms north to the ancient temple of Preah Vihear and back, would be its greatest test. The rain had left large puddles in the red-clay road and a succession of massive logging lorries either splashed the water over us or forced us to cover our faces to avoid the dust clouds, once the sun re-emerged from behind the clouds. After a couple of hours we reached the rubber tree plantation where we'd stopped on the same route four months before. Pausing for a cold drink at Phnom Dek, forty minutes later, the minefields nearby had been cleared and obvious signs of demining activity removed, though the large tyre tracks, dried out by the sun, made the final thirty kilometres into Tbeng Meanchey town (TBM), a painful one on Sokhom's elderly Daelim moto. En route, we passed the Prasat Kraham Chhouk temple where a religious ceremony was taking place with what looked like hundreds of monks and nuns in attendance but pressed for time we didn't stop for long.

The old road to Tbeng Meanchey from Kompong Thom left a lot to be desiredA rusting military vehicle provided reminders of the not-too-distant past

Five hours after saying our goodbyes to Sokhom's family and friends, we booked into a double room with fan at the Mlop Trosek guesthouse and wolfed down a chicken supper at the Malop Dong restaurant, both favoured haunts of ours. At a petrol stop in TBM's main street, we played 'tot sey' (foot shuttlecock) with a handful of bemused locals before settling down for fruit and tikaloks at a popular roadside stall run by Kove, a pretty 19 year old and her three sisters. An early start the following day meant an ice-cold shower, a 'good morning' to the frog perched on the bathroom mirror, noodles and coffee breakfast at the Malop Dong and a few running repairs to the moto before our 7.30am departure. We took the same road we'd taken a few months earlier to Koh Ker though we veered right instead of left at the village of Thbal Bek and soon afterwards came across a large group of army engineers constructing a gigantic steel bridge across the Stung Sen river at Takeng. Surprisingly, considering the bridge-building project, the road north to Preah Vihear was little more than a dusty one-lane track and as we drove through an uninhabited forested area for the next two and a half hours, we saw no sign of life except lizards scampering across our path, heard the constant shrill of cicadas and were reminded that the area was heavily mined by the HALO Trust warning signs posted every half kilometre.

An alternative route from TBM, used by trucks and taxis, would've meant a detour to the town of Choam Khsan which we'd avoided. However, we did join the road that carried traffic from Choam Khsan to Preah Vihear, which meant we were about forty kilometres from our intended destination. The sun was overhead, the road was the consistency of a sandpit and I spent as much time trudging through the sand on foot as I did sat on the moto. We saw our first humans in three hours when we came across a group of soldiers stripping a clapped-out army tank for spare parts and other roadside wreckage reminded us that this part of Cambodia was a battle-zone until a couple of years ago. At the village of Sro Am (Sa Em) we stopped for petrol and a drink near the junction of the new road being built to bring supplies and future tourists from the direction of Anlong Veng and Siem Reap. This was Sokhom's second visit to Preah Vihear and because of that we took a short-cut, wide enough only for a moto, through a heavily wooded area. We saw only one Danger!! Mines!! sign but he made sure we kept to the track which was a bit painful as the route was rarely used and the vegetation whipped against our legs and arms. In a clearing, we caught our first glimpse of the mountain on which Preah Vihear sits, but it was still some way off and we had to negotiate four steep but dry riverbeds before we arrived at the village of Kor Mouy on the stroke of 2pm, more than six hours after leaving TBM. Many of the houses were very new and belonged to the soldiers who guard the temple and the nearby border with Thailand. A recent squabble between the two countries had seen the border remain firmly closed in the preceding months with only access from the Cambodian side a possibility and talk of a road being constructed to take tourists to the very top of the mountain was rife in the Khmer press. Preah Vihear 2002 - part two will follow tomorrow.

Our first glimpse of Preah Vihear mountain as it towers above the surrounding countryside