11. Kayaking, More Cave Exploration And A Fall Off The Mountain
21.09.2023
Looks like I have a bit of catch up to do – it's been already 5 days since the last time I sat down to write a post and I can't say the previous days haven't been eventful. Let's start with some random topics crossing my mind:
Mobile phone plans: They are dirt cheap. Most of the prepaid/top-up plans you can buy are valid for a week. For USD$1.00 for you get 6GB of data or even better for USD $1.50 you get 15GB and 100min for calls plus more than enough SMSs. The only annoyance really is the expiry date of the credit after 7 days.
Littering: In Vietnam as well as in Cambodia single use plastic bags and littering are apparent problems. I try to do my part and refuse more often than not the plastic bags I get with my purchase everywhere. The environmental awareness hasn't reached people's mind here. - Unfortunately tons of trash including those plastic bags or waste sealed in plastic bags are ruining shores and river banks. In many streets people are dumping their trash at the side of the road. It's not a pretty sight – not to mention the very bad impact it has on the flora and fauna. As I can't see that people change their behaviour anytime soon, it would be amazing if 100% degradable bags, made out of sugar cane fibre or some fancy mushroom stuff would get a big push in development so they can replace the current ones that still won’t have broken down in 100 years – given we haven't managed to explode our planet by then or more likely have made it uninhabitable for humans. Oh, what a dark future Chris is painting here! Let’s hope he is very wrong and also stops speaking about himself in the 3rd person. :-p
Price revision: Cambodia isn't as low-cost as Vietnam – at least not when it comes to fruit and veggies, tofu and meals in restaurants. I found that the prices are in average 50% to 100% higher. Fortunately it is still very affordable but in the long run you can definitely notice the difference.
I teased it in my last post already: I went kayaking! Spoiler alert: I ended up with a severe sunburn for weeks on the back of my hands and on my thighs where the towel that I had put over my legs as sun blocker couldn't reach.
To make the kayaking adventure possible I rented a mountain bike for USD$3.00/day. Some gears of the bike were unusable, the breaks could have been better, blablabla...for the price it was a decent enough bike that I kept for 3 days and only once the chain came off when I bunny-hopped over one of those street bumps to slow down traffic. The boat ramp was about 5km away from my hotel and although it looked easy to get to the location I overshot and had to cycle back before I found the place.
I don't know why I expected a professional kayak rental place...in reality I entered a property with a run down house, a big chicken pen and a hut to chill out. An old couple greeted me and I asked how much it would cost to rent a kayak for 3 to 4 hours. Advertised were 2 hours for USD $5.00. The old lady and I encountered communication issues when it came to negotiations for the 3rd hour. Even google translate didn't help. After 5minutes I got it: She wanted $3.00 for the additional hour. Being me, I couldn't accept that. If 1 hour is $2.50 ($5.00/2), why should an extra hour be more expensive - it should be less. I didn't care much about the $0.50, it was more about principles. I fanned out my money and she took a USD $5.00 note and 12,000 Cambodian Riel equating USD $3.00. I looked at her and took 1,000 Riel back. She smiled and accepted. I later on learned that haggling is actually expected and not seen as rude. I thought she might be slightly grumpy but instead it broke the ice between us. She signalled me to wait and came back with a bottle of cold water, a bunch of mini bananas and some fruit balls tasting similar to lychee (edit: longan). Sweet, I got a snack pack for free! :-D Her husband waited for me at the small wooden jetty with the kayak and I started my journey.
There was a 3km loop close by shearing off the Kampot River. It looked enticing so I went for it. It was picturesque – a small natural canal lined with holiday huts ranging from spartan to luxury level and many more under construction. After I came out of the loop I still had 1.5hours left and started paddling up the river. The hard shell kayak was easy to steer and sat in the water like an unsinkable battle ship. Definitely better than my inflatable kayak at home...however, there was no padded seat and sitting on a hard and later on wet surface (from water I splashed around with the paddles) for 3hours wasn't too comfortable.
There was another downside to the kayak – it was very difficult to maneuver whenever the wind picked up. If I didn't point the bow directly against the wind, it got immediately pushed to the side and even more surface area faced the wind increasing the undesirable force impacting my kayak. Nothing I couldn't deal with! I had to fight hard but I always made at least slow progress.
The Kampot River isn't the cleanest but the river banks are beautiful and the mountain panorama adds to the visual enjoyment of the scenery. Not much more I can say about the trip than the images and videos above can't convey better.
The next day was forced recovery mainly in my hotel room as the sunburn was actually painful and I could not expose my skin to the sun for more than 5 minutes so I only went out for lunch to spoil myself at the CV cafe with 2 delicious main courses and home-made coconut ice cream with mango, banana and crispy bits, all for USD $10.00. I asked the owner Sophie about the naming of her business and the story behind it is sweet..
The CV does not stand for Curriculum Vitae. CV are the initials of her mum who passed away before they opened the business – which was 4 years ago – just as Covid was about to hit and they named the cafe in honour and memory of her.
At around 8:00pm when the nasty sun was already long gone I felt like I had to justify my bicycle rental for day 2 and rode out of town along the river until the road ended at a boom gate for a resort or something like that. The river bank has a kilometre long stretch with beach and lots of fairy lights where the locals eat, chill and play - quite a nice spot to hang out - if you can cope with the inevitable mosquitoes! At the entrance to the inner city there are even more fairy lights draped like a canopy reminding me of Christmas market decoration - however, it is an all-year-round installation I believe.
The next day I was hyped up to go on another half day trip with by bike. My destination was the Phnom Chhngok Cave 12km from my hotel. Mainly, I had to ride on dusty gravel roads. I put my sunglasses to protect my eyes not only from the sun but also from sizeable dust particles. Here is my take-away from that attempt: Unless you put swim goggles on, it won't work, I can tell you that. If a truck rushes by you will have to squint a lot afterwards to get all the dust off your retina.
It did not look too complicated on the map to get to the cave…nevertheless somewhere I took a wrong turn, had to make a little detour and enjoyed the rural scenery. My beefy 50mm mountain bike tyres proved to be a necessity on those small bumpy paths. I had to slow down a lot to swerve around potholes, puddles, big rocks...did I mention already that Cambodia undisputably has terrible roads? Just as I thought I was back on track I spotted a sign for a heritage site and got curious. I followed the path and after 100m I was surprised to realise that I had stumbled upon another cave. In front of the entrance there was a hammock, some climbing gear and lots of ropes dangling from overhangs.
The mountain with its cave isn't popular enough to have an English name on google maps but you can find it by googling the company funnily called Climbodia that organises abseiling and climbing tours. The hammock at the cave entrance seems to function as their office. I was immediately approached and offered a cave tour and/or climbing. I politely declined but had a nice chat with the local guys. I am sure that if I had arrived one hour later there wouldn’t have been an entry fee (because nobody would have been around to collect it) but since I the local notified me multiple times the price for visiting the cave was USD $1.00 or more with a guide (allegedly it is easy to lose your way inside the tunnels/cave system and therefore it is prohibited to venture deeper into the cave by yourself). I paid my dollar and entered. For this trip I was well prepared photography-wise. I had brought my professional camera and a tripod for “serious” photography instead of the casual touris snapshots with my pocket cam. I enjoyed taking pictures of the incredible rock formations and the beautiful light shining into the cave for around 30min.
There was not much to explore, though. When I exited 2 tourists were in the middle of climbing at the cave entrance. Their name were Jan and Marie. You guessed it – they were Germans. Looks like I run into people from my country disproportionately often – or the truth is that we Germans are simply everywhere. Lol
I felt too tired to make it to the next cave as it was hot and humid. Walking around and climbing over rocks while balancing a camera and tripod turns out to be exhausting. But I wasn't done with my trip just yet. I cycled back to the crossroads and took a small, challengingly steep path up the mountain. Almost at the top were a few houses and huts, some chicken, a few cows, dogs that weren't too happy to see me and even an ostrich within a fenced off paddock.
I made it to the end of the road that ended unspectaculary in a patch of grassland from where I could only go further by climbing up slippery boulders. I had hopes to make it to the top of the mountain but it seems there isn't a proper path up and I had to stop when the vegetation got too dense and the climbing too difficult and risky. Remember, I didn’t have both hands free as one was holding an AUD $3,500 dollar camera setup. I took a selfie that unfortuantely didn't reflect the scene too well, climbed down again and was about to cycle downhill when I saw a platform protruding over the edge of the hill. I assume it had been a hut in the past but now only the some planks forming the floor remained. Those planks did not feel very stable so I made sure to only step on them where a wooden support structure was running along underneath them. The view over the valley was great. I stepped a bit forward to the very edge of the platform for a clean shot, unobstructed by tree branches hanging down when disaster struck.
- There was that sound of old cracking wood...exactly how you hear it in movies and think: “OMG, this sounds so fake.” I had less than a second before and no time to do a single step before the floor collapsed and I fell like someone had opened a trap door under my feet. While I was in the air I had the flashing thought that I might fall 10m deep or more before hitting a rock, then tumble down the hillside with broken bones and likely die because I wouldn’t be able to move and nobody would find me in time. - Obviously, that didn't happen because I am still here reporting. Lucky me, bushes and shrubbery dampened my fall and already after 1.5m the vertical journey had come to an end. I was bleeding on my fingers but the adrenaline rush numbed the pain. I was able to place my camera that had miraculously escaped the intermezzo completely unscathed on the part of platform that hadn't collapsed and managed to climb up myself. My hands were shaking and I was still in shock trying to assess what just had happened. A local girl who had heard the loud cracking checked 2 minutes later what was going on and I showed her my injuries explaining in body language that anything suitable to clean my wounds would be appreciated. She came back with a few paper towels and shortly after she reappeared with a plaster. I didn't have my own first aid kit at hand because it barely would have fit in my mini backpack but what I had with me was a complimentary disinfecting wet wipe from my bus ride from Can Tho to Rach Gia in Vietnam.
I am not sure what lesson I take away from this accident. I already tried to be careful but I did not expect the main structure to fail. In hindsight I shouldn't have entered what clearly wasn’t an official sight-seeing look-out but a dodgy, weather-worn platform that should have set off my architectural alarm bells to doubt its structural integrity.
I am okay. The scratches on my ankle, upper leg and the shaved off skin on my hand are healing rather quickly and grateful I got away without significant injuries. For the future I will curb my drive to get the perfect picture no matter what. That sounds a bit like one of those New Year resolutions that get broken already in early January but let’s think positive. :-)
Below a gallery from my ride back to Kampot.
