Back in black, baby!

Finally back behind the wheels in Mr. Minsk's natural habitat!

I'm sat in a restaurant after a failed attempt at riding the tough road to the gold mines of Preh Meah stuffing my face with a cashew nut veggie stir fry.

I left past ten o'clock this morning and made it all 15 kilometers of the 47 - the latter 35 are so tough they take about three hours to cover - but was forced to return since my back break gave up on me. The hills were getting pretty intense and with just the front one working I found my heart pulpitating on several occasions.

So back to town, stop at the first service shop, lift the back wheel up, disconnect the drive chain, take the wheel off and open up the break. As expected it was covered in the disgusting super fine sticky mud - courtesy of a little incident two days ago when I managed to drown my bike in a rather deeper pool of water then expected - that however quite surprisingly did not wash or burn or whatever away in the 100 kilometers of the past days. So off to the shop to get some petrol and clean it all off. This improves the situation quite a bit but since the break pads are somewhat worn out a this stage (of course no replacements available from Laos to Singapore) so a more radical solution is required.

After a moment deliberation I take the parts and head off for the welding service. I show them how I need a little steel bit extended to provide more span of the break pads which are then in return able to break more easily and with more force. I do the sanding myself since the brute force approach of the welder makes me shiver and all fits snugly together in no time.

Back to the service shop, fit the break, put the wheel back on and, much sweatier, dirtier but all the more gritty I'm ready to go!

I check the clock on the shop wall and see that only two hours were wasted, a much much better performance then yesterday that saw me doing the maintanance all day long and since it is long past twelve I decide to head back to my favorite little lodge restaurant for lunch which brings us back to the whole 'cashew nut stir fry' bit!

Mondulkiri province is like no other in Cambodia. The countless little hills one stemming from another make the landscape average a whole 800 meters above the sea level. They are covered with pastures and rain forests and surrounded by the same immense sky as is granted to the lowlands of south. The sun shines with the same intensity here if not more but once a cloud passes over the chillier air becomes evident. The nights are actually so refreshingly cool that I was tempted to put on a jumper last night. All in all a wonderful and a refreshingly different place to all the rest of Cambodia! -

All right, it's getting late so I had better get on with it to get anywhere before sunset - the four hours might turn longer as previous experiences suggest but I am well equiped for a night in the jungle.

Knowing the first fifteen kilometers of the road and having now the perfectly tight breaks I speed as I can to make up for lost time. If the trip is really to take four hours I better hurry too. Something tells me the sun 'sets' earlier in the jungle.

First fifteen kilometers are through and so are the following two when the decent wide dirt road literally disappears into the jungle. I see a narrow passage just wide enough to snuggly fit a small truck and head on. Soon another path forks to the right - it is clearly the motorcycle trail I was advised to take. And so I hop on and off we go merrily through the dense forest.

Not three minutes later I hit some rough terrain with rocks and small boulders protruding from the ground. The sparse formations soon make way for a proper bolder dash and I have to slow down and hold on tight. It is one hell of a ride down a steep hill and I have to squeeze the breaks with all the force I got and hold on tight to make the two hundred meters all the way down. Half way through I get a sudden rush of panic since the slope strikes me as definitely one of those impossible to climb with my Minsk (previous experience from traversing the slopes of northern Vietnam) but since I am fairly commited at this point there is really no other way but forward. And so I continue down another bizarelly rocky path until I reach a shallow river. I get off to make sure it has no surprises in store for me and after a few skids I am safely on the other side.

Kilometer after kilometer of intense descent I am finally in a valley. It was the toughest terrain I had a chance to traverse yet and even though the surrounding forrest is simpy lush the handling of the bike leaves me little time to have a proper look. I pass two little villages and make sure I am on the right track and follow the trail up and down some smaller hills. The path occasionally crosses the rough wider road clearly destroyed by trucks. (Click here for the offroad video.)

 To cut the long story short after two hours and a lot of engine revving and even a little pushing up the steeper rockier hills I finally emerge into a vast lowland where the path gets much faster and I can speed things up a bit. Flying over a narrow path avoiding the coming up trees by inches is magnificent. I am so comfortable at handling my Minsk that I can afford to continue with the same speed when the path starts zig-zagging around. Three more quarters of an hour and I am clearly out of the forest and pass though a few little settlements with rather surprised looking local folk. Two villages later I am finally in Memong. I park my Minsk at one end of the streets and head on exploring on foot. I search the local 'shops' for something refreshing and manage to find a semi cold beer. The TV is playing in the background and a company of six Cambodians are sat in front of it. Before I have the chance to wonder at what is so interesting to have them all glued to the screen the ads finish and a muai tai match - or 'Cambodian boxing' as the patriotic Cambodians prefer to call it - takes over. It's the third road where the white guy gets the shit beaten out of him to immense cheer of the by-standing crowd. 'Good for them', I think to myself as I take a sip of my mildly cold beer and sit down on the offered chair. I take out my cigarettes and light one after offering a few around.

The match is over in twenty minutes with the Cambodian coming out quite decidedly the winner. I pay my respects and leave off to fetch my bike and drive further out to find a nice and safe (understand land mine free) spot a bit further away from the village.

Before I manage to get properly out of the inhabited area a man on a moto speeds by and jumps on his break a little ahead of me. He is wearing a hat with a white Police across, points at me and the direction back to the village. I tell him I am heading further ahead pointing the other way but when he repeats his gesture and says 'Police!' rather persuasively I smile, nod and turn around. Let's see what the police has to say!

We drive bavck through the village, passing the place where I watched the boxing match and onwards for about another kilometer. We pull up by a rather large two story house on stilts with two men sat down on the open bottom floor eating. It has gotten pretty dark as I dismount my bike and am lead to the two men.

They are both in their early thirties, well fed and not too bad off to - judging by the gold chains hanging off of their necks. As I walk towardws the table they give me an indifferent look of the position of power and offer a chair to sit down. A telephone rings and the shorter of the men picks it up and spends the next two minutes in a rather monotonous chatter with the person on the other end. The other guy is looking in another direction saying nothing so I just sit there and watch the two men in turns. My eyes suddenly fall on the edge of the table where a naked pistol is sitting silently with its barrel pointing straight at me. I grin since the situation does not seem dangerous - all we need is some proper gangster rap in the background and a few 'bitches' to shake their booties and all is set for a village music video. When the phone conversation is finally over the rounder and shorter man looks at me and starts off, to my surprise, in a fairly fluent English. He is a ranger in the local Wildlife preservation area and shares the office with the local police officer, the taller slimmer man with more gold around his neck on the other side of the table. The latter turns around and nods. Apparently he is interested in my purpose here and off I go explaining my destination of the nearby gold mines and my plan to sleep in a tent somewhere a bit out of the village. The ranger nods and translates to the policeman. A short conversation in Cambodian follows after which I am told that it would be best if I sleep here since the policeman is affraid of my security. Apparently there is a lot of snakes in the area and he does not want me to step on one going for a pee in the middle of the night (!?).

I try to object since I would like my privacy but the ranger is quite persistent so I have no other option but to agree. I am offered a hammock but since it doesn't come with a mosquito net I choose to put up my tent in the patch of grass surrounding the building,

Once I'm through showing them my passport of which they seem to be interested in every single detail I depart, leaving my passport behind for them to copy bits over, to put up my tent.

The nighty is hot and sticky and I am forced to leave the entrance open. It is not the first time I am cursing the fact there is no mosquito net and after being told about the snakes I put all sorts of bits of plastic and paper outside of the entrance to get an 'early' warning of the odd unwelcome visitor.

The night goes through without an incident though.

Next morning I get up early, have a quick shower from a two litre water bottle, pack up my belongings and ride off the last seven kilometers to the gold mines. I manage to get lost after being a bit too confident of the direction but after asking a few locals I arrive to Preah Meah safe and sound and with the sun rays still drawing sharp angles.

The town is a mesh of hastily built wooden houses that spread down a little hill onto another dug out to bits. Heaps of stone and dirt towering next to each other, tens of tubes and little streams channeling water used for dissolving the dirt and deep precipices - months long efforts at digging now left abandoned quietly drawing in water.

I make my way around jumping from one heap to another like a somewhat injured gazelle and take in the atmosphere. Little groups work each on their own little patch. The pace is not hasty at all - every single pound of dirt is examined thoroughly in few iterations. When I bring the camera to my eyes to catch the people at work I am not met with any surprise whatsoever so I assume they must be used to being filmed for documentaries and such.

I walk around greeting the people who smile at me widely - quite a different experience to the gold mines of Mongolia. I cross old wooden rails that are used to carry the heavy loads from the bottom of pits up where they're analysed. The humming of diesel engines is deafening - they're used for everything from pumping up water, pulling trolleys, crushing big chunks of dirt and filtering finer ones.

I draw a big loop onto the other side and share a cigarette with the three lads digging a pit under their own house. Land is getting expensive here I guess.

After climbing another heap I find myself face to face with a family of parents, both sets of grandparents, an uncle and five children all working around a little shaded area. They've got quite a little manufacture here - one of the grandmothers is sitting behind a massive engine crushing large soil chunks brought in by the uncle and some of the kids. She looks rather out of place here - I'm trying to imagine my 90 year old gran here... The father is looking after the filtering platform where the pumped up water dissolving the soil streams down the flat metal construction covered by sheets of rough absorbing cotton (closer examination reveals they are actually normal towels). These are used to catch the fine metal particles and are occasionally taken down and washed in big pots of water. This water is then examined manually deciliter by deciliter in conical shaped pans that the mother and the children rotate in their hands searching for the shiny yellowish gold dust.

It is amazing to see the whole family working so piecefully together. Not a word of complaint even from the smallest children - must be about seven years old. What childhood... I wonder how many days a week they're allowed to go to school and how much playtime they get. Observing all this makes me feel spolied beyong words!

I am disrupted in my contemplation when the father shouts something my direction and waves at me to come to have a look. The whole family draws together around one of the pans and I, poking my head through, see the fine gold dust shining out of the muddy water. Wow! I wouldn't have dreamed of seeing them finding anything in those fifteen minutes I've been around. Judging by their excitement I assume it is quite a rare sight for them as well and it makes me wonder how cost effective an operation this is. The gold dust found would not make a single gram of low quality gold and yet it must have taken them ages to find. But this is a poor country and any income is welcome in this place where an average man earns a single dollar for a hard day of working the land.

After filming a few videos I kindly thank them for the privelege and head back for the village to collect my bike. What an experience! I always though of a gold mine to be the place of low morals and general unhappiness but seeing a whole family bound together with a common goal, quite happy and serene in their ordeal... Buddhism really goes a long long way!

It's blazing hot now and it is still two hours till noon. It's promising to be a long hard day of riding all the way back. The dark clouds on the horizon last night might have brought some rain as well so it will be all the more effort. I better get going.

All photos slideshow.