Mondulkiri, the other Cambodia

What it is, and why almost nobody goes

Mondulkiri is Cambodia's largest province and its emptiest. The landscape is rolling grassland and hill forest rather than paddy, the population is largely Bunong rather than Khmer, and at night in December you will want a jumper, which no one expects in Cambodia.

Almost nobody comes, and the reason is arithmetic: it is seven hours from Phnom Penh and four from Kratie, and it needs three nights. On a ten-day trip that is a third of your holiday. On a fourteen-day trip it is the part people talk about afterwards.

The elephants, and the distinction that matters

Cambodia has a small number of domesticated elephants, historically used for logging and hauling, mostly in Bunong ownership in this province. Several projects now pay owners a monthly amount so the animals do not have to work, and manage the forest they live in.

At the ones we use, you walk into forest with a guide and a Bunong keeper, find the elephants where they happen to be, and watch them feed and move for two or three hours. You do not ride. You do not bathe them. You do not feed them for a photograph. Some days you get within twenty metres and some days you do not.

The full reasoning is on responsible travel.

The Bunong, and how to visit without it being a performance

The Bunong are an indigenous people of the eastern highlands, with their own language, animist practice and system of forest land use that predates the Khmer state in this region. Roughly half the province's population is Bunong.

Village visits are easy to do badly. The good version has three features: you are visiting a household that has agreed to receive visitors and is paid directly; a Bunong guide is with you and does the talking; and you are there for a reason, usually a meal, a walk to a resin tree, or a demonstration of something being made for use rather than for sale. The bad version is a bus, a photograph and a basket of souvenirs.

We use Bunong guides throughout the province. It costs slightly more and it is the difference between an afternoon and an intrusion.

The rest of three days

• Bousra waterfall: two tiers, 40 km east of Sen Monorom, powerful in the wet months and still good in the dry. The most visited place in the province, which here means twenty people.
• Forest walks in the Seima protected area: dipterocarp forest and, with luck and an early start, black-shanked douc and yellow-cheeked gibbon, both of which have significant populations here.
• The grassland hills south of town, which look like nothing else in Cambodia and are best at dawn.
• Coffee and pepper smallholdings around Sen Monorom, worked by Bunong and Khmer families, where you can watch processing without a showroom attached.
• A homestay night in a Bunong village, if you want it: mattress, mosquito net, shared washing, and an early household.

Getting there

The road from Phnom Penh is sealed the whole way to Sen Monorom and takes six and a half to seven and a half hours. From Kratie it is four to four and a half. There is no airport and no realistic flight.

Roads beyond Sen Monorom are red laterite and turn slippery and slow from July to October. In those months we still run the province, but we plan shorter distances and we do not promise the more remote forest walks.

Tours that include Mondulkiri

Mondulkiri forest, 4 days is the dedicated trip, usually paired with a night at Kratie on the way. It also forms the eastern arc of Cambodia in depth, 14 days.

Questions travellers ask most

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