Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The sound of Mondulkiri
My driver wears a small denim hat with a narrow brim shading freckles 
and he smokes cigarettes, flicking the ash with worn hands. He claims his elephant is one-hundred-years-old. She walks like a centenarian, extremely slowly and deliberately, down a hill-side in Mondulkiri toward a waterfall for lunch. I sway atop in a small basket with my knees around my ears; beneath my feet a great length of chain secures the basket to the elephant. While she eats green bamboo leaves, I eat sugared crackers.
The red road eventually smoothes and widens as it winds toward the provincial capital of Mondulkiri, Sen Monorom. The town is small with lively gardens here and there, a non-operational airport—currently a drag strip for local motodops -and plenty of guesthouses with not so many guests.
In the evening, the temperature slowly drops and the crickets screech: headache-inducing. I sleep in a loud night.
and he smokes cigarettes, flicking the ash with worn hands. He claims his elephant is one-hundred-years-old. She walks like a centenarian, extremely slowly and deliberately, down a hill-side in Mondulkiri toward a waterfall for lunch. I sway atop in a small basket with my knees around my ears; beneath my feet a great length of chain secures the basket to the elephant. While she eats green bamboo leaves, I eat sugared crackers.The trip from Phnom Penh to Mondulkiri province is long, a great portion of it—red and pot-holed. The landscape, from Kompong Cham to very-nearly-Vietnam, is a vista of green rice fields and spindly, bending-to-the-light plantations of rubber trees. The road, lined with tall elephant grass, is cut through less prosperous land.
The red road eventually smoothes and widens as it winds toward the provincial capital of Mondulkiri, Sen Monorom. The town is small with lively gardens here and there, a non-operational airport—currently a drag strip for local motodops -and plenty of guesthouses with not so many guests.In the evening, the temperature slowly drops and the crickets screech: headache-inducing. I sleep in a loud night.
Mondulkiri is Cambodia’s largest province. It is a province of mountains and rainforests, where an estimated 80 percent of the population belongs to tribal minorities. Most of this group are Phnong—"People of the Mountains". The Phnong make scarves to sell to tourists, the price for one, more of an entrance fee for a glimpse inside a thatched-roof house and a sip of lukewarm rice wine..
High above Sen Monorom, the elephant moves on against a view of green and blue. It is quiet, save for the crack of tree trunks and some rather disconcerting stomach rumbling coming from far below the basket.
The elephants come to the edge of the river; they do not deliberate their crossing and begin to plod over the rapid. Now we swim while a barbeque is lit, clothes hang on trees, a hammock is strung and the elephants wander off for more bamboo.
This is a different place from the rest of Cambodia. The hills are green, cows graze on long grass and pine cones are scattered beneath the imported trees they fall from. Somewhere lurking there are wild elephants and apparently tigers and leopards.
Certainly there are plenty of dragonflies, hovering over waterfalls and a trail of blood on my leg attests to the presence of small leeches. To avoid, I am told—walk quietly. Later that night, I throw a bucket of water on the screeching insects
# posted by FunMan @ 7:11 PM 
