The bus journey from Phnom Penh was easier than expected. A comfortable minibus (well a converted Ford transit with 14 seats) was fast and somewhat comfortable. I also travelled with an Italian guy called Ulisse and a French girl called Ann Sofie. Both turned out to be heading for the Elephant Valley Project. The driver had a Mao Tse Tung hair cut and drove like Lewis Hamilton. We arrived quickly at Sen Monorom after 4 hours. Sen Monorom is in the east of Cambodia in the cloud forest hills. It was a complete change after hours of driving through the rice paddy dominated plains. It was cold and wet and the hills covered in forest and patches of fog were quiet dramatic.


Sen Monorom was a dusty, dirty frontier town just a few kilometers from the Vietnamese border . Filled with 4x4s, red sticky mud and local hustle and bustle this is the gateway to visiting the Buoung, a local tribe and their working elephants.


I was here with Ulisse and Ann Sophie for the Elephant Valley Project, a project started by an Englishman Jack Highwood, who was allowing working elephants from the local community to retire in an area of forest the project managed. “Allowing overworked and abused elephants to become elephants again.”


As a visitor, you could visit the centre over night or longer and watch the elephants and do some voluntary work on the project. For me this would be a two day visit. Ann Sophie was doing three weeks. I staying in the concrete monolith that was the Green Hotel on the main road. Very friendly with great beds, it had all the charm of a shopping mall - but was fine nevertheless. With early morning starts, I though it was pointless heading out of town to one of the other Lodges .


I ate at the Khmer Kitchen, which turned out to have some of the finest khmer food I had so far tasted at $3. Here I met the owner a Mr Van Leang, who was quick to point out, with his brother that they felt the EVP was not all that it was claiming to be. I had seen a little of these arguments on a blog online, but was unprepared for the depth of feeling these two men had against the project. They claimed that all the locals were fine with the project and Jack when it first started. But in 2011, things changed. Jack started accumulating a great deal of money, and became “power drunk” on his success. He then started telling tourists not to engage in local tours etc and the local businesses declined. They now had draw up a petition with 250 thumbs print signatures to back up their claims. I heard this out, but said that there were two sides to every argument,and I wanted to experience it for myself before making up my mind . Unfortunately I met several backpackers who just cancelled their trips to the EVP.


The next day I was up at 5.30am again. I arrived at another restaurant where all of us visitors to the EVP were collected and driven out to their part of the forest where we met Gemma the manager and Greta, the head volunteer both from Australia. After a brief trek down from the hills into the valley we arrived at the river and within minutes were joined by two elephants. They were called Rob (the only male) and Onions his lady companion, and both were veterans. Their behaviour was unusual explained Gemma. In the wild, elephant society is matriarchal and adult males are not part of a female group. Onions and Rob’s relationship was therefore unique, and this behaviour was due to their past, as they were both working elephants and experienced little natural elephant behaviour. She went on to add that “Rob probably does not know he is a male, actually he has only recently discovered he is an elephant after believing he was a buffalo when he arrived!”  The two elephants walked throughout our group with their mahouts, and went to the river were they were washed and then spent ages in the shallows and covering themselves in mud.


Quite soon as the rain poured down we were joined by three old females. Rob and Onions departed and the three females came through the group at touching distance and into the river. They put on quite a display, but like the first two had awful scars of abuse. One had a scare on its head where a stick had been driven, another had a disjointed backbone and protruding ribs. All though were content and enjoying the mud, though in a very different way from that I experienced with the wild elephants in Sri Lanka.


The eight of us were soaked and we soon started the trek back towards the project’s headquarters. This consisted of several comfortable thatched tribal bungalows overlooking the valley from the hill side with a communal restaurant and a bar. A locally trained restaurant chef prepared a fantastic meal and I prepared for the coming voluntary work. I also met Steph from Newquay, Connie from Austria and all the Buoung's involved with project. One was called Po. I tried to ask whether he was named after a Teletubbie, but he just looked confused. The Buoung people are small in stature, with big smiles. Their language is very different to the Khmer language. Gemma said the EVP was employing at least two dozen and also funding a healthcare project for them.


The voluntary work turned out to be hoeing the banana plantation and by the time we arrived, the sun came out and the temperature soared. The EVP grew bananas for the elephants. This was hard work. I was attacked by a load of bitting red ants off a banana plant during the afternoon, which damped my mood and I was pleased to finish. Ulisse and Ann Sophie appeared to revel in the extreme heat and hoeing.


Dinner was again delicious, and the electricity came on for its daily three hour sortie. At 8.00 everyone turned in and I went down to my bungalow, unwrapped my mosquito net and chased a largish spider out of the bed before collapsing. The most unusual thing was the cicadas, who made the usual cicada noise, but every so often got more excited and sounded like a bad 1970s synthesizer at very high volume. I was so tired though I did fall asleep pretty quickly.


The second day I had decided to do the banana plantation work first and see a different group of elephants in the afternoon. The voluntary work in the cooler morning was much better and after a nice lunch and with several more guests we were off down into a different valley to meet three other older retired elephants. It was under the forest canopy where we meet them by a beautiful creek and it was great witnessing these three come out of the jungle towards us. They were much more playful, in the water, with the mud, scratching on whole trees and in touching distance. We were also able to feed them with forest fruits. Unlike the previous day the weather held up and it was a great experience.


We finished in the early evening and then I returned to Sen Monorom and the Green hotel, smelly, wet and covered in mud. A hot shower and dinner was great. The next morning it was an early start again, back to the same minibus this time with complimentary new Hello Kitty neck rests for the journey. Whilst that was nice, I was slightly concerned to see the driver wearing his whilst he was driving. It certainly made it difficult for him to answer his phone. At 12 o’clock I was back in Phnom Penh and changed bus to a big deluxe Mekong Express for the seven hour journey to Siem Reap. After 30 mins we broke down, but after a hot 40 mins at the road side, a replacement bus arrived and later in the dark, we rolled into a quiet but inviting Siem Reap at just after nine o'clock, some 15 hours after I left Sen Monorom.