Skip to main content

Sen Monorom - Mondulkiri

Sen Monorom is a little town, population 7000, in Mondulkiri Province in the east of Cambodia about 800m above sea level. I basically decided to go there solely because it was the last place in the Cambodia section of my Lonely Planet. And I'm really glad I did.
I met some really great people and did some really awesome things while I was there.
While I was there I did an overnight Jungle trek and volunteered at The Elephant Valley Project. More on those in the next couple posts though this one will be just about the town.
I actually spend much time in the town for the 5 nights I was there except for the last day when I did a day tour with some friends. One of the girls had already arranged for one of the guys at "The Green House" to show her around town and me and another guy just tagged along on motorbikes.

First we stopped at the school where our Guide/waiter/cook/teacher/great guy teaches every morning and we sat in for one of his lessons. they were working on Khmer poetry and rhyming I believe. not 100% sure because it was in Khmer. Afterwords during break we went around and talked to the kids and handed out pens that we got from the store on the way.

Next stop was a small waterfall on the way back to town. He had to do some off road driving through the countryside to get there and once we got there we were the only people around.


Then we went to the Bou Sraa waterfall which is the biggest one near Sen Monorom. Lots of local people and tourist alike go there but the weather wasnt very nice that day so it wasnt too busy. The drive out there took a while as it was 35km away. Our guide was a little bit of a speed daemon so I tried my best to keep up. I went a little faster than I normally would have because the Prime Minister was coming! Really, she was coming to Sen Monorom in a few days so they were cleaning up the whole city. People were going around picking up garbage, putting up new lights, taking off the fences around statues. They were in the process of redoing a bunch of the roads so we had a nice ride out to the waterfall.


While there you could pay to get dressed up like traditional Bunong (local tribe in the province) people and take photos. I really like this one below.


Next we went to one of the village farms that our guide supports (he's a busy guy) and helped 2 sisters pick rice, they thought it was hilarious that we were helping them and we had a good time. Our guide kept walking around and picking things off the ground and eating them. He gave us all sorts of fruits and roots to try.


This is one of the other villages that we stopped at. Their traditional Bunong houses can be home to 4 families out guide said.


Afterwords we met up with some other friends at the coffee plantation. I was super nice there even though the weather wasnt the best. Right in the centre of the fields there was a restaurant, stream, and a bunch of little huts with hammocks for you to just hangout in. We had the speciality "Ben Chow" which is a sort of omelette/tortilla thing (usually filled with meat) that you rip off and wrap with vegetables and dip in this spicy sauce. Very tasty. And then I had an iced coffee which is probably the freshest coffee that I have ever have considering we were at the place that it was grown. 


Our Guide Thea with some coffee beans


Next we went to the "Sea Forest" which is a nice look out point where you can see the town and the protected forest around it. The tree are supposed to look like a rolling ocean but I didnt really see it.

Our guide told us to take some jumping pictures which proved harder for some people than others to time.


Lastly we went to another look out point where we could see the city.




Remember to comment and pass on!
More photos in the Sen Monorom album

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chiang Mai to Huay Xai

I've decided that I'm done with Thailand for now. From the hostel we signed up for a mini van to take us to Chiang Kong, the border town for Laos, and see what we could get up to there. We lucked out on the van and got the seats right at the front so we got a whole bunch of leg room. So it was Nisha, Selena, & I and then the rest of the van was filled with 8 other guys from the UK and the driver. This was one of the best road travel trips I have had so far. The driver let one of the guys plug in his ipod so we were listening to more western tunes and we had the most random conversations the whole time. Along the way the first rest stop we went to was part of a cashew nut factory. I was really surprised how big the fruit was and how small the nut you got was. Inside there was a huge room with samples of all different flavours of cashew nuts and of course i tried them all and didnt buy anything. The next stop we made was at the white temple. More in the next blog post.
4 comments
Read more

Huay Xai -Laos

Huay Xai is the small town just on the other side of the Mekong from Thailand. Only 1 street of shops and 2 ports. Many homes along the water when you walk way to the right but we didnt head too far that direction. Like I said just a small tourist town where you catch your mode of transportation to the next place in Laos. All the shops sold pretty much exactly the same things. Snacks and sandwiches. Everywhere you went they were offering to sell you sandwiches for the slow boat or the bus the next day. And they all had pretty much the same 10 to choose from. We chose one that a couple owned just as you come up from the border crossing. They had about 6 different signs saying "We have sandwiches for slow boat" and "we have sandwiches for Gibbon experience". All sorts of other clever ones as well. Plus they were really nice and funny. Another thing all the shops sold was whiskey. They have lots of whiskey in Laos, special whiskey with snakes and scorpions inside the
Post a Comment
Read more

Bali - Ubud and Kuta

Bali is beautiful I wish that we could have spent more time there but we ended up getting stuck on gili. To make up we spent 3 nights in a place called Ubud and did a day tour where we saw soooo much. We saw a traditional Balinese dancing. it was really cool cause there was no instruments. The men who were seated all around chanted and made a whole bunch of different sounds it sounded like there was music coming from all around you. They also made the setting by changing how they were sitting and moving around. at one point they turned into a snake that was transformed from an arrow that was shot by the evil king. afterword there was a man who was dressed as a horse danced around on burning coconut husks. i didnt really understand the reasoning but it was impressive all the same. We went to a bunch of different temples which were all very intricate. Harvested some rice with some old ladies who tried to charge me for it after. The scaffoldin
2 comments
Read more