After a quick stop in Kratie to see the Irrawady dolphins, it’s another meeting with animals that awaits us for our next journey : elephants this time.
Indeed, we booked a 2 day trip with the Mondulkiri Project, a sanctuary that works with an NGO to save and protect elephants.
Bus ride from Kratie to Mondulkiri
The NGO is located in Sen Monorom, 130 miles away from Kratie. The minibus comes to pick us up at our guesthouse at 7:30 am.
For the first time we cannot choose where we want to sit, the driver tells us to go sit in the back row. We heard from other travelers that these are the worse seats in the bus, since these are just above the back wheels. We confirm that these are terrible, at each pothole we go flying out of our seats… Isabelle was able to get a seat in front by telling the driver that she was car-sick. Matt, Maider and Chris don’t have the same excuse and stay behind. We get a local Cambodian next to us who travels with live ducks and roosters, and spends his time listening to loud Chinese music. Chris tries to talk to him but he speaks no English at all. We understand at one point that he has 3 wives, so Chris tells him that he has 6, which made the local laugh a lot.
The drive will last 5 hours instead of the 4 hours scheduled. The last few miles are in the mountains with a lot of turns. This doesn’t seem to bother the driver who continues to drive fast, overtaking every single vehicle in front of us, regardless of visibility ahead. We feel as if we were back in South America. Unfortunately the local right in sitting right in front of Chis starts to get sick. So we try to find plastic bags for him as he is about to throw up. But we can’t find any, so he ends up throwing up in his baseball cap… Finally we arrive alive in Sen Monorom around noon, where we take a tuk-tuk to get to Tree Lodge, the hotel of the Mondulkiri Project.
Quiet afternoon at the Tree Lodge
The Tree Lodge is a guesthouse with 15 bungalows in the middle of the jungle.
A nice place away from civilization.
The bungalows are really nice. We have a big bungalow for the 4 of us with two double beds. And the hammock on the patio of course.
We decide to stay at the restaurant of the Tree Lodge for lunch. And we spend the afternoon there to rest, read and play dice. The place is super calm.
Chris even joins the locals in their favorite activity : napping.
2 day trip in the jungle
The next day we start our 2-day trip with the Mondulkiri Project. The first day will be spent with the elephants. We will then spend the night in the camp before heading out for the 11 mile hike through the jungle and come back to the Tree Lodge the next day.
We are a group of 18 during our day with the elephants, and will be only 5 for the trek the next day (most people simply do the day with the elephants and not the 2 days with the trek).
A 4×4 truck drives us from the Tree Lodge to the camp. Isabelle and Maider climb inside, with Pauline, a French girl who will do the trek with us, while Matt and Chris jump in the back of the pick-up. The landscapes leading up to the camp are spectacular.
The camp itself is located in the jungle and offers an amazing view on the river and the forest. It is here that we will spend the night.
When we arrive, a guide tells us more about the history and the objectives of the Mondulkiri Project for about an hour.
What is the Mondulkiri Project?
Founded in 2013, the NGO Cambodia Elephant Rescue Organization, manages the Mondulkiri Project in collaboration with Mr Tree (a local). The first goal is to protect and save the elephants but also the forest of the Mondulkiri province.
This province suffers greatly from deforestation. In just 10 years, it lost 45% of it’s surface area. Here we burn the forest to plant banana trees, cashew nut trees, rubber trees, etc. Logging is also really big in the region. What wouldn’t people do for money?
Facing this disaster, the NGO launched the Mondulkiri Project, that organizes treks in the jungle and offers to spend a full day with the elephants. The tourists can feed them and also go swim with the elephants in the river.
Mr Tree, founder of the project, rents a large part of the jungle to the local Bunong tribe, to make it a protected area and a sanctuary for the domestic elephants that they buy from their owners who still exploit them.
There are 5 elephants in the sanctuary today, all female : Sophie, Princess, Lucky, Happy and Comvine. All these elephants were domestic elephants used in tourism (elephant rides in Angkor) or by farmers who use their exceptional strength to carry things around.
Of course here, there is absolutely no elephant riding.
The money collected by the NGO helps to finance the preservation of the forest, the development of the elephant sanctuary and also financially help the Bunong tribe so they aren’t so dependent on cultures that destroy the forest. The NGO also offers education so the Bunong can learn English and find a job and don’t have to sell their land to big companies looking to exploit the forest.
Usually Mr Tree does this presentation himself, but today he isn’t available so we had another guide. The same one who will bring us to see the elephants later this morning.
Meeting the elephants
After the purpose of the project, to which we completely agree, our guide brings us to the jungle to meet the elephants. We will not see all 5 at once because they live separately and have different territories. Sophie and Happy are the first two elephants we go to see. Sophie is the oldest of the 5. They got her 5 years ago and today she is 60 years old. Happy is younger but we don’t remember her age (somewhere around 50).
The only way for an elephant to be remotely interested by you is if you have bananas to give them. So we all grab a bunch of bananas and make our way to see the two big mammals.
We are a group of 18 for only two animals, which is a little much for this type of experience… Thankfully we had a good group, everybody was respectful and we all had time with the elephants.
At first we weren’t very comfortable (these animals are huge and can easily crush you). But then we really liked it and we almost complain that we didn’t have enough bananas!
We then have 30 minutes to follow the two mammals around their natural habitat.
Their size is impressive, Sophie weighs 4 tons and Happy around 2.5 tons.
We even manage to touch them and realize they are full of body hair!
Sophie starts to walk towards the jungle and we decide to follow her. We follow her as she eats bamboo leaves and goes to cross a river. She probably just needed to go to the bathroom and decided there were too many tourists following her 😉 . We stayed on the other side and waved goodbye.
The third elephant we go see is Lucky, a lot wilder than Sophie and Happy. Because of the bad treatment received in the past, Lucky is still afraid of humans and we cannot touch her or feed her directly. This means we have to throw bananas to the ground for her to grab. The guides take nos risks when it comes to the security of the tourists. The encounter with Lucky is very short, as she goes back to the forest the second there are no bananas left.
We end the morning with Princess, 40 years old, and Comvine, 34 years old. Both are best friends and spend their days together.
It is possible to give Princess bananas directly inside her mouth, so she doesn’t even have to use her trunk. It is because of this habit that she got named Princess.
We spend a lot of time feeding these two and then simply hanging around them as they go about their lives.
We had an amazing morning in this elephant sanctuary. It is the first time we see elephants from this close, an unbelievable experience.
For lunch we hike back up to camp to have a typical Cambodian lunch with fried fish, veggies and rice. We all sit on the ground, Cambodian-style. Not very comfortable but very nice to eat all together.
Before going for a bath with the elephants we have a short nap in the hammocks. We adapt very quickly to the Cambodia way of life (very similar to the Lao way of life).
During the afternoon we walk back down to the river with our hands full of bananas to go see the elephants again. With the heat, it feels great to go in the water.
The first elephant to arrive is Comvine. But she doesn’t seem very interested in going for a swim. So she stays in the shallow water, extending her trunk the furthest she can to grab the bananas we have for her.
The second one, her best friend Princess, is a lot more eager to take a bath.
So there we are, face to face with this huge beast, feeding it bananas.
This experience is even more impressive and surreal than the one this morning. Here we are even closer to them and really notice just how big they are.
Princess is so excited that she decides to poop in the river when we are still all around her. Matt isn’t far from getting poop all over him. Of course this made the entire group laugh hard, and jump out of the water even harder!
We were supposed to swim with a third elephant, Happy, but her mahout (the person who handles the elephant) wasn’t able to find her in the jungle. So we get out of the river to go say bye to Sophie who crossed the river to get to the other side.
And on our way back to camp who do we run into? Happy!
Night in the jungle
At 4 pm we hike back up to camp and most of the group jumps into the truck to go back to the village. We stay here with Pauline to spend the night before tomorrow’s hike.
Around 4:30 pm, the 5 people who did the hike today arrive to spend the night at camp as well, before seeing the elephants the next day. We are just 10 to sleep here. Setting up camp is super quick. Hammocks with mosquito nets are already setup in a big room.
We all sit down on the main patio and get to know each other and talk a little bit about our day. The group is really nice.
Just before sunset, Matt and Chris hike up the hill to see the sunset behind the mountains. Isabelle and Maider stay at camp chit-chatting with a French couple.
We then gather all together for diner. On the menu tonight, eggplant soup cooked in bamboo, a dish with chicken, tofu and veggies, and of course everything served with rice.
The guide who is with us tonight is also the one we will have during the trek tomorrow. His name is Krem and comes from a nearby Bunong village. His English is very basic but we are still able to communicate and ask him about his family and his life in the village. He is super nice. And more importantly he laughs all the time. His laughter is so communicative that we all laugh when he does!
He teaches us a card game to end the night. Basically we pass cards along and the first one to have the 4 same cards has to grab a spoon in the middle. As soon as the first person grabs a spoon, all the others have to rush to grab one too. Since there are only 9 spoons for 11 players you have to be quick not to loose.
The two losers with no spoons have then to drink a shot of homemade rice alcohol (nicknamed happy water once again).
We have a lot of fun but Krem never looses, he is quick and used to playing a lot obviously. So finally on the last round we put a strategy in place (nice way of saying we cheated) to beat him and make him drink a shot too! We had a great time together, laughing a lot, and drinking a lot for the slow ones…
8:30 pm we all go to bed in our hammocks, with a thick blanket because the night here can be pretty chilly.
Day hiking
The next day we are supposed to wake up at 7 am for breakfast at 7:30, but we are all awake much earlier. The night in a hammock is fun but not the most comfortable. Matt and Maider slept pretty well, but Chris and Isabelle struggled a little bit.
The view from our hammocks on the valley is just stunning. Waking up to such a view is amazing.
We all go down to the patio to sit and admire the view in silence.
Before grabbing a nice big breakfast made of pancakes with Nutella and bananas. Perfect before starting our long hiking day.
At 8 am we say goodbye to our friends who stay here to see the elephants and we leave the 4 of us with Pauline and our guide Krem for the 11 mile hike.
The trek starts with a steep uphill trail through the jungle.
At the top we arrive on a large field and are shocked to witness deforestation first hand. We walk in the middle of burnt fields where the forest used to be. It is scary to see.
We continue and see cashew nut tree fields on our way. We had never seen these before and were pretty surprised to learn that the nut grows just bellow the fruit. And as the fruit shrinks, the nut grows. We passed by plenty of avocado trees and jackfruit trees as well.
For lunch we stop next to a small waterfall where we go for a nice refreshing swim.
And at the same time Krem is grilling some excellent marinated pork on the fire for lunch, accompanied by veggies and rice of course. Delicious!
We then continued our way to a second waterfall, a lot taller, where Krem went for a quick shower.
Before getting back inside the jungle where we walked by beautiful huge trees, weird lizards and a HUGE spider. We all agreed that it was the biggest spider we had ever seen in the wild.
We stopped for a moment so Krem could make shot glasses out of bamboo for us. A very nice gesture. We walk away with our glass each.
Last river crossing before we get to the village. Here no bridge, so we take off our shoes.
Then we start our last hard uphill portion before arriving in the Bunong village. Here once again we see first hand the devastating effect of deforestation.
We arrive at the village at 4 pm, after walking 8.5 miles. We were pretty sure we wouldn’t be walking 11 miles given our pace and the many stops on the way.
We are surprised to see that this village is in way better shape than most remote villages we have seen so far in Laos or Cambodia. Here all the houses have windows, we even see brand new cars and motorbikes.
Krem takes us to his house where we meet his wife and a few of his children and grandchildren. Of course like all the villages around, the backyard is full of chicken, roosters, pigs and dogs.
We say our goodbyes to Krem, and thank him for all the great moments we shared with him. A pick-up truck from the Mondulkiri Project comes to drive us back to the Tree Lodge late afternoon.
In the pick-up truck we meet up with one of the girls that spent the night at the camp with us and other people who went to see the elephants. Isabelle, Chris and Matt hop in the front, while Maider and Pauline jump in the back with 4 other people. The pick-up truck apparently couldn’t handle to weight because it breaks down at the top of a steep hill. The driver refills the radiator with water for the engine to cool down. Of course we don’t have enough water so he has to go ask for more to people working in a nearby construction site. We will stay stuck 20 minutes before finally driving to the Tree Lodge.
The shower feels almost as amazing as the cold beer that follows. We go to bed early because we are exhausted from this long day. But we all agree that we had an amazing time during these two days in Mondulkiri and are glad to have participated in this special project. It was a magical experience.
The next day we have a bus at 6:30 am to go to Phnom Penh where we simply stop over-night before going to the South of the country the following day, to Kampot. Known for its peppercorn.