W

Hello Everyone (I am unable to write a title for this blog...so its titled W??).....I have had enought adventures the past five days to last hmmmmm a life time :) Five days ago I met up with Ashley in Phnom Phen,who is from Kamloops, so exciting!! and we decided to go on an adventure. The next morning we hopped on the bus to the mondokiri province in the far east of Cambodia (If you google it it wont come up because I dont know how to spell it!!!) The roads were said to have been built by the bastard child of the devil himself, and that wasnt even in the rainy season, which it is now!!!! So we prepared ourselves for a hardcore 5 hour journey to where very very few backpackers go, 13 hours later we arrived in Se Monoram! The 1st leg of our journey was on a local bus, part way we switched to another small bus and headed down a road that was the worst I had ever seen....until the torrential rains came (also the worst I had ever seen) and we had to hop into the back of a very full land rover to slip and slide through the meter(s) of red mud. Trucks were stuck the whole way along the road...I have amazing pics and videos as it was so so unreal, but the connection is so slow in Cambodia I cant download pics, 3 times the roads were so bad that everyone had to hop out of the truck in the rain and tramp through the mud!!!! We laughed the whole time, even when the driver had a flat tire and when he kept having to stop and check under the hood!!!!

We arrived to a lovely village amongst green rolling hills, we are staying in a lovely little bungalow and it is so so peaceful. Chilling out in the hammock and reading book!! Ah its the life. Yesturday we went to a minority village where we went trekking through the jungle on the back of an elephant!!! She was destruction elephant!!! She pulled out anything in her path....bushes, banana trees and as we were walking she walked over to a very large ancient tree and began to pull off a branch. I said "wow, she is so strong, I cant believe she can pull of that branch," as I said this she grabbed a hold of the trunk of the tree and pulled the entire tree, roots and all, out of the ground with her trunk........unreal. If this was a touristy place there would be NOTHING left of the jungle. Nothing!!! It was uber cool and uncomfortable being on the back of an elephant!!

Ashley and I ended up getting a ride home with the director of the Red Cross in Cambodia who invited us to have dinner with him and his friends!! A free meal, who could say no!!!! Now I have eaten some really gross things so far...spiders, silkworms, snake, scorpions etc....but what I ate last night still turns my stomach and makes me cringe when I thik about it!!! We had a 'buffet' of minority food that you can only get in this region that consisted of ground bird, literally, feathers, guts, beak, bones...the whole thing, a very strange liver dish that just looked so so wrong and a minority soup which was made of congealed cow blood, blood and was full of all the strange bits of animal that you would NEVER ever eat at home the bits that would go in the garbage...furry bits, crunchy bits, chewy bits....oh and it just tasted so wrong!!! We couldnt refuse as we were guests and the food was served onto our plates for us....poor Ashley was given 2 bowls of blood soup!!! I only had one....

Tomorrow we are heading back on the same road we came for our '5' hour journey!!!! Off to the beach soon!!!! Later megs