Trekking in Ratanakiri
Embracing the adventures in the border areas of Laos and Cambodia was just an amazing experience!
Each morning daylight mean’t that it was time to move as even the most skillful Tarzan might have a hard time finding the right path during the dark hours. Jungle trekking brings some big challenges, but every effort is greeted with unforgettable experiences offered by the untouched nature. You will feel great after passing through some more difficult terrains or challenging your inner circus artist by crossing over some rickety bamboo bridges. And this is just the beginning. Sometimes you feel like you have stepped into a larger-than-life botanic garden because the nature is so wild and even though the plants themselves might look familiar, they are totally bigger than the ones you see back home. Sometimes you can see a deep green rainforest from a higher point of view. Descent from one of these natural lookout hills was really fun because it reminded us of sledding during the winter time. Minus the sledge. The hill was super steep, covered with dust and rocks, so you really couldn’t walk down from there on your feet. That’s why we just glided down from there with the backpacks still tightly attached to our backs. This left a huge cloud of dust behind us!
During the night, we slept in a hammock in the rainforest! Of course, we could pull a safety net over the hammocks that the biggest creepy crawlies couldn’t come inside to disturb the sleep and scare the jeepers out of us. One of the coolest experiences was having a flashlight to discover the forest during the nighttime. We could even see some flying foxes (yes, these do exist, google it!). In the dark, all of the rainforest comes alive so we could hear all kind of different noises, crackling of the trees and whistles coming from around us. One of the magical moments was seeing fireflies passing by with their golden glow. When the batteries of the flashlight finish off, these guys are the only source of light!
Yes, this is Lipton tea! But it is not in the ordinary tea cups, instead it is in drinking cups that were made out of bamboo. Bamboo is hollow from inside making it an absolutely great material for this kind of improvised drinking ware.
Our local guide showed us practicalities for surviving in the rainforest. It turned out that using a machete to cut open roots of one exotic tree allow you to obtain water from inside. Slightly fizzy water is also used as a medicine in these regions. Also, we ate some small crabs from the jungle river that were simply delicious after a short cooking over the fire. It is just awesome to learn about all these things because you really can’t figure them out yourself while being in the wild nature. Of course you can read from the web and books, but seeing with your own eyes and getting a first-hand experience is something different!
