By John Borthwick
The Sydney Morning Herald
May 6, 2012
Model community ... the welcoming host of a home-stay at Chambok. Photo: John Borthwick
Home-stays are helping to get a village back on its feet, writes John Borthwick.
Hauled by a two-cow-power vintage vehicle, we're making
unsteady progress along a Cambodian jungle track. Cathedral walls of
wild bamboo arch above us as a pair of oxen pull our farm cart up a
rise. The boy at the reins grunts them to a halt and gestures that from
here on our way through Kirirom National Park is a walking trail only.
With my Khmer guide Thy (pronounced "Tee"), I hike the
last kilometre. We scramble up a rocky watercourse until the rainforest
opens out to reveal an amphitheatre of giant boulders tumbled at the
base of a 30-metre cliff. A gossamer cascade spills over the crag. "This
is Chambok Waterfall No.1 - sorry, not a very exciting name," Thy says.
I slip into the 20-metre-wide pool at the foot of the
falls. In rainy season this would be a maelstrom, with monsoon torrents
crashing down from above, but we are still in the dry season and the
pool is swimmable, which is a cool relief from the jungle humidity.
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Children perform a traditional Khmer dance. Photo: John Borthwick
Forest cicadas are roaring like a rock band at level 11
as we begin our trek back to the Chambok Community Ecotourism Centre
that adjoins the national park. As we amble down the trail, Thy points
out medicinal plants, oddities such as the convoluted "monkey step" vine
and small spirit house altars. A sign in English on one shrine reminds
visitors of the enduring animist beliefs of Khmer people, saying: "Our
forest is alive with plants, animals and forest spirits."
The Kirirom plateau in Kampong Speu province sits about
100 kilometres south-west of Phnom Penh. Its name, meaning "Mountain of
Joy", was suggested by a monk decades ago when the 32,000-hectare
reserve was a favourite retreat for Phnom Penh's elite, including King
Sihanouk. Then came the heinous Pol Pot regime (1975-79) and in its
aftermath Chambok's villagers were relocated when their area was
infested with remnants of the Khmer Rouge. On their safe return in 1998,
the villagers initially reverted to survival agriculture -
slash-and-burn farming, cutting forest timber for charcoal production,
and hunting.
A non-government environmental organisation that Thy
calls Green Shadow of the Forest initiated the Kirirom-Chambok
ecotourism project with the aim of halting deforestation and providing
new livelihoods for the villagers. So successful was the scheme that it
has now expanded to include a home-stay program, English-speaking trail
guides, handicraft production and community education.
Arriving back at the centre's cluster of mural-decorated
buildings, I see a class of local teenagers learning the principles of
conservation. Neatly dressed and driving their family motorbikes, they
look like typical Cambodian teens. Sadly, most of them are near
illiterate. As Thy explains, many farm children receive only two or
three years of basic schooling before they are needed to resume work on
their family fields.
As dusk falls a minibus of backpackers from the Chambok
home-stay program arrives. We tuck in to a hearty dinner of greens,
rice, pork, soup and bananas, all prepared in the centre's Women's
Kitchen that, partly funded by Australia's AusAID program, provides
culinary training and rotational employment for 337 village women.
Dinner over, we gather before a stage for the day's
finale, traditional Khmer dances performed by local children. They turn
and weave gracefully, with delicate hand movements and songs telling
their national folk tales and myths. This is the positive image of
Cambodia that I have come to see, not Phnom Penh's pair of ghoulish
meccas, the Khmer Rouge "killing fields" and S-21 torture museum.
Later we head back to Chambok village. The family lots
typically consist of timber stilt houses, many of which now sport a neat
"Homestay" sign on the front gate. We pull into the one we've booked in
advance and meet our host, a petite, beaming woman called Koo, and her
family. Her two-room guesthouse is newly painted in blue and even has
solar-powered lighting. She shows us upstairs to two immaculately clean
rooms with a mattress, bedding and mosquito nets. There's a traditional
thunderbox washroom in the yard.
From just two original home-stays, Chambok now has 37
families who take in tourists on a rotating basis. The cumulative income
is significant for the village, with profits shared among participating
households, the poor and ill, and forest conservation works. Chambok
now serves as a best-practice model for community ecotourism across
Cambodia. I am serenaded to sleep by a symphony of crickets trilling and
cicadas droning. The only sound competing is a sweet-toothed Khmer
mouse trying to unzip my pack, desperate for the chocolate bar within.
Sihanoukville
"Open your heart, open your wallet!" the beach vendors
joke at Sihanoukville. A home-stay at Chambok is the perfect way to
break the road journey from Phnom Penh to the beach resort of
Sihanoukville. Sunny, snoozy "Snookyville", 190 kilometres south-west of
the capital on the Gulf of Thailand, offers a combination of
white-sand beaches, "bucket" bars for backpackers, casinos for the
bored, new resorts for the ever-anticipated "Russians are coming"
invasion and time-warp prices for food and drink. There's music, dance,
island trips and scuba-diving, or just doing nothing, with good
accommodation costing from $25 a night. The dramatic new Australian
movie Wish You Were Here, starring Joel Edgerton, is set partly in
Sihanoukville, but your stay will surely be much lighter fun. footstepsinasia.com.
Trip notes
Getting there
There are no direct flights from Sydney to Phnom Penh;
one-stop options are via Singapore, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City. Chambok
is about 100 kilometres south-west of Phnom Penh on National Road 4.
Getting around
Cambodia specialist Footsteps in Asia arranges individual
or group Chambok home-stay packages and Sihanoukville excursions. Its
10-day Cambodia Experience program includes both destinations, plus Siem
Reap and Phnom Penh, and costs $US630 ($605). footstepsinasia.com.
Cambodia's de facto currency is the US dollar, with
Cambodian riels used for small change. Credit cards are accepted and
ATMs dispense US dollars.
Before arrival, obtain a Cambodian electronic visa, which is far easier than the "visa on arrival" procedure. www.mfaic.gov.kh/evisa.
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