My search for a lost mountain city beneath the jungle

We were having some friends from Belgium over who were traveling South-East Asia. No trip to here is complete without visiting Angkor Wat.

And that happens to be the place that I’ve been calling home for the last 3 months.

Now entering Angkor Wat costs $20 for a day, or $45 for three days. Since we’ve been in Cambodia for a couple of years, my wife and I have seen the temple site a few times. And 3 times in there has been enough for us.

Instead of that, I went looking online for other cool places to visit here. This is how we remembered the amazing site of Phnom Kulen.
The history of this place is almost completely lost to humankind. There’s very little left that tells the tale of this entire region.
But a couple of months ago, a French research time used LIDAR to investigate this huge area, and what they found was amazing. An entire city is buried beneath the jungle.
See the results of their research here

This proves that there was a huge city, as big as the known Angkor site, but much older.

And I already walked on top of it without knowing.

In 2012, we took our first trip to Cambodia. And we actually went up that mountain to visit a waterfall. Not much else was known at that time. Since the area was a hotbed for Khmer Rouge activity during the civil war, and even long after that.

Even today, there are still mines and unexploded bombs from 30 years ago to be found.
And what I didn’t know at that time, was that we had fallen for a huge scam.
Let me explain…
There’s a single road that goes up that mountain, and that ends up at a stunning natural sight. A huge waterfall and a riverbed with 700 year old carvings from the Angkor era.
But somewhere during the 2000’s, a local business man acquired the exclusive rights to develop the place.
And boy, did he smell money!
Every foreigner that wants to go up the mountain has to cough up $20. That’s $20 for a 10km (6 miles for you imperial peeps) drive up a crappy mountain road.
Oh and don’t bother when tuk-tuk drivers or hotel owners say that they found you a ‘great discount’. You can buy the ticket in town for $12, at the hotel that is owned …. By the same business man! Gotta love it, right?

But it doesn’t stop there.
They’ve built a huge reclining Buddha on the top. And for us religious ignorant people, it looks quite impressive.
However, after reading up on this scam, it seems the Buddha is lying on his left side. Which is a HUGE no-no in their religion. Basically, it is a fake copy.

The entire site is aimed at sucking as much money as possible out of unsuspecting tourists. The food stalls are poor, and there are no toilets…
Anyway, we went up there in 2012, and actually had a good time. Completely oblivious to what normal prices are here in Cambodia. We were the typical ignorant tourist this guy is preying on.

So, back to 2016. We decided not to fall for the scam again. After a bit of research online we scrapped together barely enough information to find another way up the mountain. A long staircase, supposedly found in the middle of nowhere.

This is the page where I found this information

We wrote a few things down and asked my friends father-in-law to drive us there with his tuk-tuk.
After a pleasant half hour drive, we cracked open our first beers as we were cruising through the Cambodian countryside. The views were stunning, freshly planted rice was everywhere.

The green is lovely this time of year

Once we reached the main road to the mountain, our driver started to ask around for directions. We ended up at the local police station, but even they had no idea where we wanted to go.
Then this guy pulls up who saw us talking to the officers. Asking us where we were trying to go.
After a long discussion, he seemed to know what it was. And he offered to show us. So off we went, 4 slightly intoxicated white people in a tuk-tuk, following this older Khmer farmer through miles and miles of rice fields. Seeing the mountain range closing in as we went.

Then we take a right turn, on to a smaller dirt road.
What I saw there blew my mind.

Every 10 meter there was a rubbish bin!

Now if you live in Cambodia, that’s a really strange sight. There’s very few rubbish bins to be found here.
After a couple of miles, we saw the origin of the rubbish bin. There was water bottling plant right at the foot of the mountains, gathering the water from the Kulen spring. They obviously had enough money to put our rubbish bins on a barely used road.

This is the actual water, the blue stuff in the picture is the bottling plant.

Anyway, the road gets really bumpy while the mountain closes in. And then we saw it, a nicely maintained staircase leading straight up!

We got out of the tuk-tuk, bought more beers and started walking.
And kept walking.
And then some more.

Until we finally reached the end of the stairs.

We were not sure what we were supposed to find there.

There was a small temple being built, the fact that I didn't take any pictures of it says it enough. We went passed that and found...
More stairs!

After another very sweaty half hour, we reached the top. This is were supposedly the spring of the Kulen river is. The same spring they bottle the water from. From here another set of stairs went off to the scammy waterfall area. Not something we wanted to do at this time. Mainly because it's a hike of an hour and a half.

You could actually go swim in that pool. The water was freezing though, so we skipped that.

You can see this is from a bygone era:

I'm not a big fan of getting my picture taken :)

A few hundred more stairs after that, we found the actual spring. Or so we think.

Going passed that, we found our first clues that there might be hidden temples and buildings beneath this thick jungle canopy.

Old foundations or just a rock?

The final bit of stairs took us to a small dwelling hacked into the rock. There was nobody anywhere in sight.

This lead to a small shrine

And this

A tiny pathway started from that peak. It curved around the mountain to the left. But it was obvious that it was barely used. And with the rainy season storms, most of it was washed away.

We tried it for a hundred meters, until we conceded that we best get our intoxicated behinds back on those stairs if we wanted to live.

Which was a shame, who knows where we might have ended up.
There's definitely more to be found up there, as the French archaeological team proved.

So perhaps I'll make a part 2 of this story some day. When I feel like taking thousands of stairs again.

I hope this has inspired you to take the road less traveled. Go off the beaten path. You'll find hidden gems wherever you go, I promise!

I'll leave you with some more pictures of the trip:

#cambodia #travel #photography #life #asia #photos #photo #pictures

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