We reached the first campsite on God's Back Mountain within a couple of hours, and decided to use the opportunity as a picnic stop.
Nature Is An Incredible Artist 🎨
When we sat off on this trek the purpose was only to gauge the difficulty and quality of the trail for future trips. I was surprised to see the trail is well-marked and easy to follow, and I think in the future I could leave at 3am in the morning and hike the first few hours in darkness, especially now that we've already explored this portion of the trail. In my former mountaineering days back in Colorado, I used to do a lot of alpine ascents, and this just basically traveling super light and without camping gear in order to reach the summit quickly and make the descent all in one day.
After we were more than an hour into the forest we began to see some plants and other things we don't see often near our house. Termites here have to be more creative because there are no human houses for them to snack on, and I even saw three daddy long-leg spiders relaxing on a fern together as if they were the best of friends. I wish I could tell you the names of the plants and trees, but my plant and tree vocabulary are more geared towards what you can find on a farm here in Cambodia.
Ecstasy Forest 💊
Many years ago I watched a documentary online about the "Ecstasy Forest" of Cambodia, never knowing I would eventually live here. There is a now-endangered species of tree locally known as "s'dey saa," and back in the 1990s and early 2000s this tree was the main precursor for the production of the rave drug ecstasy. A Vietnamese mafia group apparently used to boil these trees in the forest here and send the oil off to the Netherlands to be made into pills that help Dutch people dance like idiots.
After a massive effort from the Australian government this illicit tree trade mostly came to an end, but luckily or unluckily China filled the gap with a synthetic alternative, so I think modern ecstasy is now made from mystery Chinese chemical compounds. This species of tree is still protected though because its numbers are now quite small, and even though it's technically illegal, half of the homes in our village are made from ecstasy wood.
The front doors of our house are made from ecstasy wood, and many parts of our house and cabin contain this wood, but it was done by the previous owner. We would never make the choice to use endangered species in any of our construction projects. Sorry to wander off-topic, but anyways, after we had our picnic we decided to explore another 20 minutes up the trail just to be sure it was still easily navigable. Everything looks good and I will definitely be returning for a solo alpine style ascent in the near future.
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