Wild Cambodia: Beyond Angkor Wat (Writing Competition: Winner)

“Did you have a good holiday? Where did you go, again? You’re not very brown…” my work colleague’s words tailed off, her tone conveyed concern. 

“Cambodia”, I said, and hesitated, wondering how to phrase my response as I thought back to my holiday adventure.

The first morning I had watched the sun rise at Angkor Wat. Through the enveloping darkness flowed a steady stream of torchlight, moving towards the temple like an orderly procession of glow-worms. The distinctive silhouette of the spectacular temple complex formed out of the dawn, the developing pale pink sky reflected in the pond in front of it, eventually lighting the magenta water lilies. Threads of white egrets flew over until the sky turned blue and the sun cast its heat. Then I had explored the vast temple site, both intricately carved with demons, gods and scenes of everyday life yet imposingly built, the structures themselves full of symbolism.

In the forest, Pileated Gibbons had returned my gaze. An inquisitive female swung in to get a better look at the group of us, her thick cappuccino-coloured fur a contrast to the male’s dapper black and white.  Curiosity satisfied, she looped away through the trees, effortlessly flying from limb to limb.

The following day I had reclined in a chair on the shaded top deck of a boat, a breeze off the vast Tonle Sap Lake fanning my face, coming back from seeing Painted Stork, Asian Openbills and Spot-billed Pelicans thermaling above me whilst terns and swiftlets skimmed past low. I had passed floating villages; there were cameos of children distracted from their lessons by the tourist boat, glimpses of negotiations in floating shops, women preparing the next meal in their kitchens and residents tending their thriving gardens, soil ingeniously contained.

Just a couple of days later, by complete contrast, I had watched a Bengal Florican in an open plain of dry rice paddies, bobbing up out of the grass, as if on springs, announcing his presence to females.  This striking bustard was not alone; a female flew low across the plain, perhaps the object of his attention.

At another site Great Ibis called across hot dry woodland; moving in at a discrete distance, I had peered up to a brooding parent, beak open, panting, on its high exposed nest. Pied Harriers glided over and flashes of brilliant colour – violet and azure – dazzled me as Indochinese Rollers flicked by.

From the comfort of the vehicles between destinations everyday life slipped by: sheets of drying cassava in front of homes on stilts; stalls of fruit and vegetables, pots and pans, cola bottles of gasoline; fields of crops, plantations of rubber trees and hop-like black pepper vines, the pepper later savoured with lime juice in an aromatic dipping sauce. 

In lush forests of palms and strangler figs I had slept under canvas and woken to tropical pre-dawn noises followed by the explosion of a dawn chorus. At the end of the day I had dined on delicious meals made from simple, fresh ingredients and had gazed up at a spot-lit Blyth’s Frogmouth in the canopy, slightly swaying myself after the effects kicked in of wine at the end of a long day.

Moving on, after walking through dry dipterocarp forest – seedpods like a golden snitch – I had seen three species of vulture including the very rare Red-Headed and Slender-Billed; wary, watching, hunch-shouldered, they shuffled up to a carcass and squabbled over the choicest cuts.

Then out on the wide sweep of the River Mekong, I had watched family groups of Irrawaddy Dolphins break the surface giving tantalising glimpses of glistening pale grey beak, tail and rounded dorsal fins. A Mekong Wagtail flicked its tail and flew from stone to stone in the shallows.

Back on the banks of the river, with the backdrop of a gilded temple and Buddhist monks’ vivid orange robes on washing lines, I had eaten “krolan” – traditional sticky coconut rice and soy beans cooked in bamboo, bought in a bundle from a road-side stall, peeling back the stick’s outer layers to reveal the fragrant sweet centre.

Then there was the village silk weaver; the tuk-tuk bustle of Phnom Penh; elephant footprints in the forest; other gibbons and langurs, geckos and lizards, snakes, scorpions and insects; more fabulous birds (Collared Falconet, Banded Broadbill and Crested Treeswift, among many others, stay in my memory), and the wide smiles of local people as I attempted “thank you” in Khmer…

My colleague had returned to looking at her laptop. “It was great”, I said.

Read more about our 17-day 'The Best of Cambodia - Birds, Mammals & Temples holiday.