En route to Preah Vihear

A section of the road that defeated us on the way to Preah Khan

I've now reached Preah Vihear in the recollections from my trip to northern Cambodia that took place in late March. We'd arrived in Tbeng Meanchey after the gruelling 11-hour moto ride from Stung Treng. In the Malop Dong restaurant we met up with Vutha and Seyha, who would accompany us on the remainder of our trip to Preah Vihear, Anlong Veng and Banteay Chhmar over the next couple of days. They work with me at Hanuman Tourism and came equipped with a 4WD to make life a little easier for my old bones. Early the next morning, during a thunderous storm, we headed south towards the temple site of Preah Khan for a quick inspection, however the rain of the last few days did us no favours. Preah Khan is hard to reach at the best of times, located a long way from any main roads and reachable on local dirt tracks which get very muddy after rain, and so it proved. Two hours into our trip and with Vutha, our best driver at the helm, we deemed it impossible to continue and get to Preah Vihear in the same day. So, reluctantly, we turned around, sloshed through the water-filled track we'd just navigated and returned to Tbeng Meanchey by 10am.

Our lunch stop at Sraem as Vutha cleans the wheels of our 4WD

The road to Preah Vihear was much easier, though diversions aplenty as they are laying lots of concrete culverts at various points especially the small bridges. At the turn off for Choam Khsan, the recent upsurge in interest in the province has cleared the heavily-forested area into a mini-housing centre with a new large market standing empty, whilst at Sraem, where we stopped for lunch, the small town was awash with military personnel. It took us 2 hours to reach Sraem. Our lunch of chicken and deer was quickly consumed and the final 45 minutes to Kor Muy, the village at the foot of Preah Vihear, was remarkable for the sheer volume of military troops and heavy guns and equipment that is visible from the main road. This area used to be a wilderness with nothing and no-one between the sleepy villages. The change is dramatic. We quickly confirmed our guesthouse booking then took the newly-laid road to the top of the mountain. It took about half an hour as the incline is very steep in places and not for the faint-hearted. At the beginning of the road we spoke to a few soldiers to check the situation which they said was quiet, and as we neared the top of the road we encountered a barrage of machine-gun posts dug in on both sides, with plenty of troops milling around, especially when we reached the summit and the area around the small pagoda. This had been the scene of one of the main disputes with the Thai soldiers in the preceding months. All the soldiers appeared at ease, though each carried their own arsenal of weapons and the gun posts facing Thailand were heavily-manned from what I could see. We had reached Preah Vihear and parked our 4WD next to the 5th Gopura.

Our first sight of the mountain with Preah Vihear on top

The rock formation at the top of the Preah Vihear mountain - I would be standing there a few hours later

The beginning of the newly-laid road to the top, built by the military

The incline is much steeper than it appears in these photos - ask anyone that's been

The only traffic besides us was military traffic - we were the only tourists that day

A rough section of the road that will need to be widened in the future

The village of Kor Muy as seen from the road to the top

The final leg of the mountain road, just around the corner are the machine-gun posts and the summit of Preah Vihear

One helluva ride

A young girl in the village of Mlu Prei with her kapok pods

For much of the time, the track we followed was actually better than I had expected. Admittedly it was the dry season and it was only the rain of a couple of nights before, that has left the surface water on top. The track was easy enough to follow, there were a handful of villages en route to ask directions and though it would be impossible to take a motorized vehicle along the same route as us, it was straightforward for motos. Yes it was a bit boring at times, 11 hours on the back of a moto isn't my ideal form of relaxation, but we saw a variety of birdlife, the villagers we met were ultra friendly, the children fun and playful and it is always interesting to push yourself to the limit of your endurance from time to time. After we left Stung Treng and Thala Borivat behind, the road remained good for ten minutes before it turned bad, lots of large puddles to navigate around or through and no people whatsoever. An hour into the ride we suffered our first puncture and then an attack by wasps and at 10am, our first village, Thmor Thmei. The children at Chhvang, where we paused for a water-break, were adorable and after initially running away screaming, they returned for a photoshoot and smiles all round. It was here that we flooded the exhaust and spark-plugs and had to wait a while for them to dry. The forested wilderness was punctuated by villages such as Veal Veng, Sralau, Chhaeb, Saem, Sgkear before we reached the district HQ of Mlu Prei. At Pou Teap I suffered an acute attack of diarrhea though my stomach had stood up well until that point, as well as both Tim and I falling off the motos. It was pitch black as we reached the Sen River and crossed the wooden bridge at the gateway to Tbeng Meanchey, our home for the night and the motodops had done well to navigate in the dark for a good half an hour, without lights and in a forested area. The end of the most difficult day of our trip but one that will remain with us for some time to come.

A muddy main road through the village of Saem

A community hall in the village of Saem

The police station in Mlu Prei

A rickety wooden bridge in Mlu Prei

This Mlu Prei girl looked great in her krama but took it off for the photo!

Leaving Pou Teap via a small wooden bridge over a temporary waterway

A tree trunk bridge across a river in the middle of nowhere

We're just about to see the last of the sun and we're still many kms from Tbeng Meanchey

The ride from hell

Less than 10 minutes out of Thala Borivat and the previous night's rain began giving us problems

So how bad was the ride from hell? Well, for me it wasn't too bad as I've experienced worse during my Cambodia travels over the years, especially in the early days of no roads or tracks and we had to make it up, but for Tim, it was a nightmare. He's too tall to be a passenger on a moto anyway and he has a bad back too, but for 11 hours, on bumpy, uneven tracks through what is effectively wilderness except for a handful of villages, it was enough to try anyone's patience. He'd been well pissed-off when his motodop tried to accelerate through a wet patch, and there were many, and only succeeded in dropping the bike, himself and Tim onto the hard, and wet, floor. After we stopped for our 4th puncture repair in the gloom of the early evening, still some way off our eventual destination, he was ready to throw in the towel. He didn't, but it was close. We finally arrived at Tbeng Meanchey's Malop Dong restaurant at 7pm, exactly 11 hours after we'd left Stung Treng, and we rolled into town on a flat tyre. We stuffed our faces with food and cold drinks before retiring for a well-earned sleep at the Phnom Pic, aka Diamond, guesthouse. Paul and Dom were our motodops, two members of the Stung Treng moto-mafia, and to be fair, they were good drivers, mine in particular was older and had done the trip before so he was the safer of the two and he only sent me off the back of his Daelim once, which for such a long trip through poor road conditions, wasn't a bad effort. We never warmed to them because of the dealings we had with them, and their mafia buddies at the start, but they did the job we asked them to do and at least it gave Tim a taste of the adventures I've been enjoying for years in the Cambodian countryside.

A nice flat stretch of road and that's me in the distance

Its a downhill slalom of the muddy variety as we approach a dried-up riverbed

The view from my driver's perspective: Paul turned out to be a safety-first man

Not a rest-stop, its another puncture repair stop - fortunately they came prepared

Quite a bit of the track was underwater after some rain on the previous days

An adorable group of children at the village of Chhvang

The smoldering cut forest surrounding Veal Veng village, part of the extensive Prey Lang Forest region

This part of the forest disappeared a while ago, but much still remains untouched

The water-babies of Chhaeb village, enjoying a cooling dip in the afternoon heat

Tim again asking "why me?" as the going gets tough, and very wet and muddy