The Jungle Brothers
Cambodia was the only country that had some kind of defined plans. After meeting Jernej (Slovenia) and Matthias (Austria) in Vientiane (capital of Laos) and telling them my short adventures in the Lao jungle we all decided we should make some trip into the jungles of Cambodia as we were all heading there. So we set a date, in around 2 weeks time,and a place for the rendezvous. The original crew of 3 grew to 5 since Paul (Australia) and Adam (US) joined. Five men strong we made shopping for the days in the jungle to come, noodles, rice, dried shrimps, garlic, spices and some dried meet.
Me and Matthias had an unlimited time frame for this adventure, the rest of the guys had to head back to the civilization after 4 or 5 days. Matthias and I stretched it out to 10. This was one of the biggest highlights, mind openers, “peacewithingcreating” moments of my life. I understood something that was all the life in front of my nose but never as clearly laid out - the love for the nature, how much it mattered to me, what it made me feel, how I felt within and the wish to have more special moments like this. This would have been impossible without the company of the Jungle Brothers and especially Matthias. Respect goes out to you.
It all went like this…
We drove out of Banlung, on top of a pickup truck to the last village on the road…
From the we crossed the last big river by boat. Note how low it sits, we had to stay as still as possible to stay above water…
My hand drown map of the surrounding rivers. The scale is huge and it was proved later on that a map was useless anyway… its a jungle!
First camp. (Even if the days were hot, the nights proved cold. After the first night in the open we would keep fire watch every night to keep the warmth coming.)
First dinner. Shrimp risotto. After cooking up this meal I was handed the chefs position and was enjoying the daily routine of preparing breakfast and dinner for the next 10 days, with the help of others, of course.
Breakfast. Longest rice noodles. Eating was a challenging fun.
The second day we came across this swimming hole. After two days of drought this was like Christmas for kids. We drank directly from the stream and swam galore.
Coffee for lunch served from freshly cut bamboo cups.
The day was passing quickly and we had to start preparing dinner. This was to turn out to be a very special day for Paul Bogacki as he peeled his first garlic. “In Australia it comes already skinless and caned” - he was clarifying. Maybe even sliced… It was a funny moment for all. Paul, who explained us as well the “shazam” of a rice cooker, is working in the field of microbiology. Improving the barley hops by manipulating their genes to be less susceptible to disease, he will bring us the beer of the future. With the peeled garlic Australia seems already to be on foot in the 22nd century. Dude, it was a damn pleasure!
This time it was egg noodles. Get your chopsticks ready!
After the dinner we succumbed to sleep with the fire watch. Pulling sticks we decided what shifts we would keep. I had the worst - 2am to 4am. In this picture its Jernej and me still sleeping, short after daybreak.
Jernej works as a journalist for a local TV station in Slovenia. Its very rare to meet another Lithuanian on the road (in total so far 3 diferent groups/person) but the chances for a Lithuanian to meet a Slovenian while in Laos lies close to zero. We proved the zero is quite possible. Im loosing the point here…. While not drinking coffee or killing leeches with a machete Jernej can be found in the jungle looking for leaves to smoke. Running out of cigarettes he rolled dried grass. I found it funny and it reminded me how much luckier I am having given up smoking. You were a damn good companion and we are going surely to visit you and your bears in Slovenian mountains one day. Salut!
How ever close we could in the past 72 hours this very same day would be our last together.
After crossing more bamboo forests we reached our second river. Long discussions later the guys finally decided to head back.
Jungle Bros, from left to right ->
Matthias, Adam, Paul, me and Jernej. This is just before splitting the team, day 3, after coming across the second river somewhere in the jungle. From this point me and Matthias continued alone. We met Paul and Jernej later on in Phnom Penh to tell the stories, but this was the last time we seen Adam aka the Ultravioletizor, clearing water of all the impurities. He continued to Vietnam as far as I remember. Hope your doing fine and the bike is running smooth too bro!
