Koh Kong city can be your starting point for exploring incredible landscape of Cardamom Mountains, absolutely unspoiled, pure and undiscovered piece of nature. After crossing south coast land border from Thailand to Cambodia we reached Koh Kong city – worth reading! 🙂 Koh Rong is a convenient starting point for exploring Cardamom Mountains – dense tropical rainforest.
Cardamom Mountains.
Cardamom Mountains rainforest is a huge area and you probably won’t be able to explore on foot. You’ll definitely need a motorbike. But that might be a little challenging in Koh Rong, as all the bikes were already gone. After checking all rental places (only 3 rental companies in the whole place), we finally managed to rent one. But the last available motorbike wasn’t in a great condition. So, no surprise it broke down an hour later in the middle of the jungle!! 🙂 We had to organise a car to take the motorbike back to the rental company and of course pay for all this ‘road assistance’. Anyway, luckily it broke down near one of the main roads in Cardamom Mountains, so we manage to catch help pretty quickly. We would be so f***d if it happened somewhere on a gravel path in a dense jungle.
How to get to Cardamom Mountains?
The southwest Cardamom dense jungle covers 1 million hectares, which is 6% of Cambodia land, concealing amazing biodiversity, mangroves, waterfalls and wildlife sanctuary. The easiest way to get there is taking road no 48, which leads along a small Koh Kong airport. After 20-30 km turn right into one of the small roads, which will lead you to a mangroves forest, wildlife sanctuary and beautiful river bridge. This is where we met a group of Buddhist Monks. Their orange robes looked amazing against the grey background. Driving further south direction you’ll reach the National Park.
Trails in Cardamom Mountains are maintained enough to be able to drive alone and not get lost. Take water with you and some snacks, as the area is pretty empty and looks abandoned. Beside it’s HOT!! Although we managed to find one opened restaurant just next to the river.
What to do in Cardamom Mountains?
It’s a great idea to do trekking across Cardamom Mountains. There are number of ways to explore the area including boat trips, kayaking and sleeping in the jungle. The whole area is so stunning that we decided to exlpore it on foot. Cardamom Mountains was an unexpected piece of pure biodiversity in this region of Cambodia. We took a long walk along the river coast. There are number of unfinished bungalows, connected by a wooden bridge. The bungalows looked quite expensive, it seems like the investor ran out of money to accomplish the complex. They all remain without windows and doors, but they still look pretty luxury.
