Jungle Impressions by Ben - CAMBODIA

Now when someone asks who has been to a jungle I can definitely say I have been there. I have camped for days before, but never in my life have I experienced something so magical and unbelievable. As we started out we were riding aboard four elephants. It was semi-thick jungle, but I think the elephants were more for the enjoyment than actual functionality. It was truly fantastic to be moving through the jungle on top of an elephant. But behold, it could not last! As we started moving up out of a river we were crossing the strap across the elephant’s front went SNAP! But really nothing happened, there were still two straps holding us on and our guide just asked us to get down while he fixed it. I spent the rest of the trek for that day walking, having had my fill of elephant trekking for the day.

We dropped off two of the elephants at a little pit-stop and grabbed some food from a village. We kept two elephants to carry our food though. (There was a lot of it, for about 16-18 people). We were moving a little sluggishly that day and so we were unable to reach our goal for the night and sleep in the jungle. However I am happy that we took that extra time, because we were able to stay in an amazing P'nong village. Upon arriving we stood a bit in a circle and played with a hacky sack. But the fun truly started when we started playing frisbee (yes mom, I CAN find places to play frisbee in every country).

At first all of the kids shied away from the crazy people throwing discs at each other, but eventually due to our cameras (taking a video of the kids and showing it to them. While that might not seem truly amazing to most of us these kids had probably never seen a digital camera, perhaps even a camera, in their entire lives. In J.K. Rowling’s words....."It’s just like magic!"), but most importantly it was due to Jon's fantastic work. I have never seen such an enthusiastic attempt at getting kids involved. By the end of the night we had probably every single boy in the village and a few of the girls playing frisbee. They were pretty good too. But one of the most important things I learned that night is even if you don't speak a word of P'nong (their language) and very little Khmai (Cambodian) it is still possible to interact and enjoy yourself with the local people. That night we stayed in a traditional P'nong house and I learned the words for hair (sok), cheek (bon), ear (jiett), feet (p'sai jou), pants (don't remember), and shirt (aol? don't really remember), and we taught them how to count (I think they knew a little though), dog, shirt, pants, ear, hair, etc.

The next day we trekked for four hours and reached a riverbank where we decided to camp out for the night. We took a little swim and cleaned off, ate some food with hand made chopsticks, and talked with our guides and learned quite a bit more. One of our guides sung to us and told us stories which were all fantastic.

The next day we went to another P'nong village and planted rice. I got taught a new card game and won 2 dollars (we were playing for 12 cents a game, so I won a lot). We talked a lot and the next day we got up early and left. We walked back (though this time our bags were on the elephants) and got back to where our car was. We found that our car was actually sunk into a ditch. So we waited for a few hours and the elephants pulled the car out. We all got in and drove back to town.

What I learned from all this (we lost a day in the beginning too) is that an experience is never lost; a new one is just gained. Now its time for me to go.

-Ben