Our plan, which we fail to executed spectacularly, is to spend the day hiking across tricky mountain terrain while watching the indigenous elephants, tigers and gibbons eat each other.
Ended up taking a short stroll through some woods and spot two butterflies and a sparrow. This is scant reward for the 4 hours we've endured being thrown around in the back of a pick-up truck and our numb bums and glum expressions speak volumes.
Things perk up in the afternoon though as we reach the highest point in the Park and explore a deserted Hotel and Casino complex built by the French in 1925.
Straight out of The Shining, this grand colonial pile sits on top a hill in the middle of nowhere. It was first abandoned in the late '40's when Vietnamese backed locals rebelled against the French. Restored to former glamorous glory in the '50's, it was trashed again in 1971 by the Khmer Rouge who used it as a prison and one of their infamous re-education centres.
A nearby Killing Field is a sombre reminder of activities at that time, and our guide Kee reckons the ghosts of the victims now stalk the hotel corridors. He's not being melodramatic, Buddhist Cambodians believe that without a proper cremation their kin will never rest at peace.
The tour ends on a brighter note as we board a riverboat for a sunset cruise back to Kampot. Of all the waterways we've been on these past few months this stretch of the Teuk Chhou river is perhaps the prettiest. We're hot, we're covered in muck, and none of us can resist plunging in for a cooling dip.
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