Angel's travels: Trekking in Virachey National Park / Cambodia

Two days trekking in Virachey National Park

The main reason to make the trip to Ban Lung is to visit the Virachey National Park for a day trip or a couple of days ‘jungle trip’. The park is a big forest with minority people still living there under very basic circumstances, beautiful lakes and waterfalls and some wild life. Ban Lung is known for its rusty colour earth also known by the locals as ‘dey krahorm’. It looks very similar like the North of Australia but a lot flatter.

So I booked myself on a 2 day (1 night in the jungle) trip with DutchCo (www.ecotourismcambodia.info) which as you probably would expect is run by a Dutch couple Rik and Ivonne. At 7.30am I met the rest of the group and our guide Sotum (his tourist name is Johnny) for breakfast at their office/café and we received our small backpack for the two days including hammock. With all my needed belongings in the backpack and 2 liters of water we were seated in the pick-up truck. After half an hours bumpy ride outside Ban Lung we arrived in a very ‘red coated’ village called Kalai for the start of our trek. We were met by our Park Ranger called Coem and I instantly fell in love with this guy with his big cheeky eyes and of course big smile. He lives in the village and the next day we would have lunch at his place to see how the locals live. Coem was dressed in clothes who (in my eyes) were in need of some alterations and a wash but most of us would put them in the bin! He was wearing a baseball cap, flip flops and most importantly carrying his big parang knife, later on I found out this was used for many different purposes. We set off at 10am, it was already baking hot with hardly any shade so the walk was hard due to the heat but the landscape was beautiful with lots of big trees, ‘dry’ rice paddies, lots of bamboo trees and some small lakes. For lunch we stopped somewhere in the forest and we all received a lovely banana leave filled with fried rice to give us more energy for the rest of the trip. Coem our ranger is not someone who can sit still for long so he went into the forest and we could hear noises - if he was cutting half of the forest with his Parang knife- . Sotum said he’s preparing shot cups for our whiskey tonight! As I wanted to see how he was making these I went over to see him and indeed 3 little cups were already finished. Later that evening I’ve learned that

they are very useful for drinking whiskey indeed. Around 3pm we arrived at our ‘campsite’ which was a small area with a mini lake and a bamboo frame for our hammocks. The first thing I did was jump into the cold water to cool down and wash all the dust from me and my clothes. Coem and Sotun started setting up the camp incl. a small fire and we just had to sit and relax. Our hammocks got unpacked and placed in a neat row in so we would be safe and comfortable next to each other that night. As it gets dark around 6pm we had an early dinner to enjoy it while it still was light. We got fried rice with beef and vegetable and as a treat some fish from the river which Coem caught with his basic rod!

So at 7pm we were sitting in the dark with full stomachs and waiting to go to bed, we ‘killed’ the time by chatting, drinking whiskey and playing games but by 10pm we were all tucked up in our hammock for the night. Surprisingly I had a very good night as the hammock was very comfortable.

The next morning after breakfast we left the camp for our walk back which seemed to be much harder than the day before, we had lunch at Coem’s house which I would call a sheltered accommodation for animals and humans. It was one big room ( I still don’t know where they were sleeping) with a fire in the corner, bare floors and some tree trunks for furniture, pigs, chicken, dogs and cats running around the place or chasing each other and looking for food.

After lunch we reached the village within half an hour and a truck took us back to Ban Lung for the end of the trip.