A ride to the jungle: Koh Kong and Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary

I learned this the hard way: never ever let your hotel/hostel/guesthouse book a bus for you without really interrogating them on what sort of bus. For instance, I asked if it was air conditioned. They assured me that it was. They didn't mention that it was an old, tiny van with 15 people crammed in, minimal leg room (I'm 5'3", it takes a lot to make me complain about the lack of leg room), with barely functioning air conditioning. There was also next to zero luggage storage which meant that we had the joy of bags on laps. However, I arrived in Koh Kong 5 hours later, sweaty and cramped but happy to be off of the bus. Also very happy that I called ahead and arranged for a driver since there was a swarm of very eager tuk tuk drivers all vying for our business.

In any case, the Blue Moon Guesthouse was clean, comfortable and air conditioned. Can you ask for more? Not to mention that the lizard living on the wall seemed to keep the fly count down. We had booked their waterfall/jungle/island/ tour in advance which included a driver for the day and meals. However, we were later told by locals that it was a complete rip off at $25 dollars for the day since you could go out to the street and get a local driver for $5 for the day. What did I know? In any case, our driver was nice and the food was yummy. My only complaint was that they didn't take us to the island advertised that we wanted to go to, Koh Kong Island. We went to another smaller island which was okay. They claimed that the waters were too rough but they looked pretty calm to me. Who knows, I certainly don't know anything about boating.

Walk to the waterfall through the jungle. My hat may be slightly ridiculous but my face did not get sunburned during my trip. Sunburn=wrinkles and cancer. Ewwww.

Waterfall love! I went swimming in a calm pool to the left of the water fall in the river above. Nice way to cool off after a hike.

I stopped Cragon from stepping on a snake on the way back. As my guidebook pointed out, most of the snakes in Cambodia won't kill you instantly but antivenins aren't widely available in hospitals. Obviously, I saved him from a slow and painful death. Unless it was a Cambodian garden snake, in which case I saved him from an unsightly squishing!

The countryside was really beautiful, you don't have to go far outside of Phnom Penh or Siem Riep to find it either. Most of the country seems very rural. This picture was taken on the ride back from the waterfall.

The tractor in front of us on the dirt road.

Into the mangrove forest! This is another guy who joined our group for the afternoon. If you think my hat was silly...well imagine a cowboy hat with AX jeans and a Lacoste polo. Apparently, this mangrove forest is one of the largest untouched in Asia though I just got that via the grapevine. It was pretty surreal with giant roots like spider webs arching about.

On the river, all of those clusters are mangrove trees.

Fishing village on stilts, and only accessible by boat.

Highlight of the day was how many dolphins we saw. They were too fast for me to get on my camera, but believe me I tried. According to my book it was probably the endangered Irrawaddy dolphins.

Question: Too many pictures? Not enough pictures? Just the right amount? Leave your feedback and the dominant party shall be responded to!