#Cambodia - Hiking in the forests of Kep National Park

Most tourists usually visit Kep province to stuff themselves with crabs, frolic on the shores of the beach and laze in the sun. But the Kingdom’s smallest province has one more gem to offer – the lush mountain ranges and tranquil atmosphere of the Kep National Park.

Unbeknownst to many, the Kep National Park, located behind the Veranda Natural Resort, offers an off-the-beaten track that’s waiting to be explored.

Established in 1993, the park covers an area of 66.65sq km and an 8km mountain trail circuit that’s easily travelled by foot, motorbike or mountain bike.

“Most of the local tourists are students who wish to see the great outdoors, away from all the stress in school. Foreign tourists come here irregularly.

“Sometimes, we see 30 people a day. Sometimes, no one comes. If it’s the rainy season, we usually won’t have any guests,” says a park ranger.

Wide enough to allow cars to pass through, the inclined trail around the mountain offers the ideal path for cycling, motorbike-riding and trekking. Signs had been put up to guide the riders and hikers.

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Pok Toeng, the director of the Provincial Department of Tourism, said “at the circuit trail, tourists can ride bicycles and motorbikes. The trail is 8km long, 300m wide, and covers a total of almost 9,000ha”.

“Some people walk on the trail while some go depeer into the jungle. There are also signs inside the forest to guide hikers. We helped install signs, maps and flyers for the tourists,” he says.

Lao Innarith, 38, a guide at the Kep trek says: “I usually start the trek with my clients at the other end of the trail and then we walk our way back to the starting point. The distance is about 5km, I think.

“If we start at a place under the forest shade, we can reach by sunlight. But if I start in the open space in the morning, my clients and I will end the trek at the cold forest.

“We have many tourists in Kep but numbers have slightly gone down these past two years, especially tourists from Western countries. We usually have two to three groups a week, with each group composed of one to 30 people.

“If it’s a small group, we usually travel on foot. Otherwise, we ride a bus. Normally we spend around two hours trekking.”

At the end of the trail, a panoramic view of Kampot’s Bokor mountains, nearby villages and the island of Koh Tral await.

“We stopped at the Kampot viewpoint, about 2km from the park entrance and then came back. We didn’t take the mountain trail circuit because it could take a long time,” say Anna and Simon, a French couple who braved an hour-long trek in the park.

“The Led Zep Cafe offered the best vantage point. It’s where you can sit and have a drink and get a good view of nature before exploring its forest,” they added.

The map for the trails is provided by Led Zep Cafe, the only one in the area. They were made by the cafe’s now-deceased French founder, Christian Debinut.

“He started drawing the map in 2002. He drew every attraction, trailheads, and viewpoints that hikers can visit,” says Lang Anika, one of the owners of the cafe, who worked very closely with Debinut.

Aside from managing the cafe, both Anika and co-owner Srey Pao, often explore the deep recesses of the jungle to clean the trails and set more signs for tourists to follow.

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 “Tourists walk here for leisure. But for us, we spend day and night in the forest to clean the area, pave a trail for them and renew the signs.

“We only do it in the forest trails and leave the circuit trail to the authorities since the road was widened to provide access to cars in 2018,” says Anika.

Cambodians, Anika says, do not usually hike in the deep jungle. Some 99 per cent of the time, it’s the foreign tourists who literally go the extra mile.

She says foreigners have picked up the habit of collecting their own trash from the forest, making it easier for her and Srey Pao to maintain its cleanliness.

Several of the noteworthy stops marked by Led Zep’s map are the Kampot Viewpoint, Sreytal Waterfall, Main Trail Summit, Angkoul beach viewpoint, Little Pond, Nun’s Pass, Sunset Rock, Kep Gardens, Little Buddha and Stone Horse.

The entrance to Kep National Park can be found behind Veranda Natural Resort, about 7.6km from the White Horse roundabout sculpture in the town of Kep.

 

Source - Phnom Penh Post

#Vietnam’s Kingdom of Caves launches river tour

A boat cruises along the Son River to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Quang Binh Province

 Quang Binh taps yet another tourism strength with a river tour through its natural landscapes and traditional villages.

The tour, starting February 20, is organized by Oxalis, the only company licensed to offer adventure tours to the world famous Son Doong Cave.

The one-day tour is boat ride that explores hidden gems along the Son River and enables visitors to visit  traditional craft villages that produce rice paper and the non la (conical hat), a Vietnamese cultural symbol.

Tourists will also have a chance to ride bicycles past small villages to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, a world heritage site and a major tourist attraction in the central province.

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 Booking your Flight, Hotel or Resort now  

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  Each tour is limited to around 15 passengers, said Nguyen Chau A, general director of Oxalis.

Son Doong, part of the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in central Vietnam, has hogged the international spotlight since it opened to tourists in 2013, four years after members of the British Cave Research Association finished their exploration and declared it the world’s largest.

Local resident Ho Khanh first discovered the cave in 1991, and rediscovered it almost 20 years later, opening it up for exploration.

Last year, Quang Binh welcomed a record-breaking 3.9 million tourist arrivals, up 18 percent from the previous year.

The province has over the past years proposed several developments, including a cable car system to boost tourism in the area, but these have met with strong opposition from environmentalists and the public.

Watch a video on the beautiful Tu Lan Cave in Quang Binh, known now as the Kingdom of Caves.

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Source - VN Express

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#Cambodia - Mondulkiri’s highest and smallest waterfalls, metres apart

Leng Khin is Mondulkiri’s highest waterfall, measuring 25m in the dry season and 28m in the rainy season.

 

Most people travelling to Mondulkiri province head to its most famous waterfalls Bou Sra, Kbal Preah, Romanear I & II and Monorom. But what most visitors generally don’t experience, however, are the province’s shortest and highest waterfalls. 

Leng Ong and Leng Khin waterfalls are officially the province’s shortest and tallest waterfalls respectively, and in an ironic twist of fate the two record breakers are located less than 300m apart in O’Reang district’s Pou Yam village, 26km from Mondulkiri town.

Leng Ong Waterfall measures less than one metre in the dry season and 1m in the rainy season. While Leng Khin Waterfall, the province’s highest, measures 25m in the dry season and 28m in the rainy season. 

Both waterfalls are covered by dense trees in a cool and calm environment, and at each waterfall’s base there is a big water reservoir in which tourists can swim.

 At only 1m in the rainy season, Leng Ong is the province’s shortest waterfall.

 

Mondulkiri Tourism Department head Ngin Sovimean explained that a lack of infrastructure and knowledge of the uniquely contrasting sites in such close proximity has led to them being one of the province’s undiscovered gems. 

“The district authority has recently worked with the community to build trail road to the waterfalls, so we hope they will now attract more tourists.

“Both the local community and the local authority are developing the sites to ease access for tourists so they can travel faster and with more safety. Tourists can visit both Leng Ong and Leng Khin waterfalls freely without paying any fee,” he said.

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Culture - ‘Thainess’ in the 21st century

Considering all the prevailing negative stereotypes about Thailand and Thai people, it is understandable why the Thai government would want to promote a greater understanding about Thainess. But Thainess is nothing new.

Classical Thai dancers, golden-spired temples, floating markets – such Utopian images of Thailand have been greatly exploited in tourism promo campaigns since the 1970s and 1980s, widely portrayed in “Visit Thailand” posters pinned up at tour offices and Thai restaurants around the world.

Those initial impressions we drew from such imagery may still have a place in many of our hearts; at first sight, we were immediately drawn in, awed and intrigued by such cultural color ...

While these iconic elements are indeed uniquely Thai and have been so for centuries, they don’t accurately reflect or portray the identity of modern Thailand and the majority of its people.

Much is the disappointment for many to learn that such images are far from the reality, that the Thai people of the present day, for better or worse, have long-evolved, and made numerous self-preserving identity-sacrifices over the decades and centuries in keeping up with reform and modernization.

Most Thai people today have never even been on an elephant, let alone sat on a wooden canal boat – certainly not for commuting.

Indeed, floating markets and elephant camps are little more than fading tourist attractions to meet the expectations of those still seeking to fulfil expectations of that glorious, idealistic image of century-old Siam.

Many luxury hotels will continue to market and exploit this expectation. And it is at/through such properties where you still may be able to see a classical Thai dance/music performance, or book a trip to the nearest floating market, or to the jungle for an elephant ride.

But beyond the hotel lobby’s tour desk, you’ll eventually have to emerge from that proverbial cave of allegory, coming to the realisation that the majority of the khlongs have long been abandoned or filled in with concrete.

Modern Thai people spend thousands of hours a year in traffic jams, if not on the back of a recklessly speeding motorbike, or squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder in overcrowded public transport ... But such “modernisation” challenges are not unique to Thailand, and ubiquitous across the developing world.

As for embracing “Thainess” in a modern context, we must look below the surface, where there lies a certain prevailing charm and lure; it is just as much about the outlook and hospital nature of the Thai people – that smile that says “I’m curious about you...” – that friendly, optimistic spirit which can be found in abundance across the kingdom. full of millions who will happily welcome complete strangers into their family homes, and feed them into a coma.

An empathetic and intuitive people who you can depend on to lend a hand if it is within their means, and they’ll likely not ask for anything in return.

Sure, there are plenty of exceptions to the Thai people's good-willed nature, but let us not forget that deceit and greed are universal wherever there is ignorance and economic disparity.

So let us try hard not to feed such negative pessimism, and instead embrace the longevity-enabling optimistic outlook for which Thainess is foremost and firmly rooted. Mai Pen Rai na, Yaa Kit Maak ไม่เป็นไรนะ อย่าคิดมาก – It’s alright na, don’t stress it!

Adapted with permission from original article on www.siamerican.com

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Considering all the prevailing negative stereotypes about Thailand and Thai people, it is understandable why the Thai government would want to promote a greater understanding about Thainess. But Thainess is nothing new.
Classical Thai dancers, golden-spired temples, floating markets – such Utopian images of Thailand have been greatly exploited in tourism promo campaigns since the 1970s and 1980s, widely portrayed in “Visit Thailand” posters pinned up at tour offices and Thai restaurants around the world.
Those initial impressions we drew from such imagery may still have a place in many of our hearts; at first sight, we were immediately drawn in, awed and intrigued by such cultural colour ...
While these iconic elements are indeed uniquely Thai and have been so for centuries, they don’t accurately reflect or portray the identity of modern Thailand and the majority of its people.
Much is the disappointment for many to learn that such images are far from the reality, that the Thai people of the present day, for better or worse, have long-evolved, and made numerous self-preserving identity-sacrifices over the decades and centuries in keeping up with reform and modernisation.
Most Thai people today have never even been on an elephant, let alone sat on a wooden canal boat – certainly not for commuting.
Indeed, floating markets and elephant camps are little more than fading tourist attractions to meet the expectations of those still seeking to fulfil expectations of that glorious, idealistic image of century-old Siam.
Many luxury hotels will continue to market and exploit this expectation. And it is at/through such properties where you still may be able to see a classical Thai dance/music performance, or book a trip to the nearest floating market, or to the jungle for an elephant ride.
But beyond the hotel lobby’s tour desk, you’ll eventually have to emerge from that proverbial cave of allegory, coming to the realisation that the majority of the khlongs have long been abandoned or filled in with concrete.
Modern Thai people spend thousands of hours a year in traffic jams, if not on the back of a recklessly speeding motorbike, or squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder in overcrowded public transport ... But such “modernisation” challenges are not unique to Thailand, and ubiquitous across the developing world.
As for embracing “Thainess” in a modern context, we must look below the surface, where there lies a certain prevailing charm and lure; it is just as much about the outlook and hospital nature of the Thai people – that smile that says “I’m curious about you...” – that friendly, optimistic spirit which can be found in abundance across the kingdom. full of millions who will happily welcome complete strangers into their family homes, and feed them into a coma.
An empathetic and intuitive people who you can depend on to lend a hand if it is within their means, and they’ll likely not ask for anything in return.
Sure, there are plenty of exceptions to the Thai people's good-willed nature, but let us not forget that deceit and greed are universal wherever there is ignorance and economic disparity.
So let us try hard not to feed such negative pessimism, and instead embrace the longevity-enabling optimistic outlook for which Thainess is foremost and firmly rooted. Mai Pen Rai na, Yaa Kit Maak ไม่เป็นไรนะ อย่าคิดมาก – It’s alright na, don’t stress it!
Adapted with permission from original article on www.siamerican.com
- See more at: http://www.thephuketnews.com/culture-thainess-in-the-21st-century-53852.php#sthash.fzq3Gsto.dpuf

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