I've just spent the last couple of days in the middle of nowhere, hammock camping. I've been in the foot hills of the Cardamom mountains. The only way to get there is by boat, those narrow fishing type boats. The first part of the journey is along the river and then you turn off into the mangrove swamps, which get narrower and narrower until they become channels just wide enough to navigate the boat through. It's a confusion of, seemingly, identical waterways How the boatman doesn't lose his way is pretty impressive. Not as impressive as where I was staying though. After about five minutes of walking through the swamp it starts going uphill. The land at this point is moderately covered in new growth. there is a spread of smooth rocks looking out to the mangroves and the surrounding mountains. A perfect place to watch the sunset. Just before the jungle is an open sided small building, well basically a roof but that's all you need. There's plenty of room to hang a hammock under it and plenty of trees around to hang a tarp and hammock. Needless to say, there's no electricity, no internet/wifi, no lighting. If you want to cook something, it's real easy. Build a fire. Walk about two minutes up the hill and you're in thick jungle. There are old animal tracks that are now used as pathways for walking to neighbouring 'houses'. The nearest house is about a two hour walk through really dense jungle. My feet have hardened up enough that I did a four plus hour hike barefoot. Okay I got a couple of thorns but they pulled out real easy and I didn't even bleed. I've turned into a right feral shit. There's heaps of good crabs and shellfish to be had in the mangroves. The shellfish stick long 'tongues' out of the sand and you grab them between your toes and pull them out. I wouldn't advise doing that with the crabs though. There's two guys who live up at the roof permanently. Bodies of forty year old's faces of sixty year old's. they only speak Khmer and one of them tells stories by dancing traditional dances I haven't got a clue what it's about but its mesmerising. He fought in the Viet Kong and was involved with Pol Pot. His stories alone are worth at least a couple of blog's. These boys know how to cook. They know how to drink as well. They sneak off in the canoe to their secret little mangrove shack whiskey merchant. They'll get stinking drunk fall over, then drag themselves off to somewhere shady, where they can't be found and sleep it off. funny guys. 'Oh that's awful' some of you may say. Well, they seem happier than a lot of miserable fuckers in the western world and if you had been through what they've been through, you too would be guzzling Khmer home brew whiskey. I guzzle it because it's only $1 for two litres. Anyway, they cuddle me when they're drunk. They're so sweet. Shit faced but sweet. So apart from the cross dressing German Kiwi that's it really. Hold on. What!..... A cross dressing what? Yep that's right. You read it right the first time. Mani is a German but he's lived in NZ for the last thirty years and he likes wearing frocks. He also likes whiskey for breakfast......lunch and dinner. He's even got some really feminine flip flops to go with his frock. That's nothing. He came wandering out, the other day in a bikini. I swear I'm not shitting you. Now picture this: A sixty three year old German Kiwi with a back as hairy as his chest, wearing a bikini that would probably fit a sixteen year old girl, the inevitable bollock hanging out. Yeah, I bet you could do with a Khmer whiskey now. I'm going back out there tomorrow and I'm fully expecting an apocalypse now scene. For sure he's going to turn into Colonel Kurtz.
Speechless,
(and I fucking was when I saw him in a bikini)