The entire town of Banlung is built on soil thats brick red and that creates a dirty red coloured dust that settles on absolutely everything - the bus that drove us there was spotlessly white when we started and when we arrived was coated in mud red; all the trees and plants and sides of buildings all have a reddy brown top layer, and just walking around in town for a few mintues covers your legs in the red dust that makes the place look so rustic and unique.

We stayed at a place called Tribal guesthouse which in high season would have been such a cool social place packed with backpackers about to do jungle treks in the Cambodian rainforest and rooms would have been $10 a night. But we were there low season, it was basically empty and we got rooms for $4. Pierre was here so I felt really ill and wasn't up for doing much for the first 2 days I was there.



The third day, we did a one day jungle trek in Virachey National Park. We drove on the back of our guides motorbike for about an hour and had to listen to him tell moralising stories and legends from his childhood about kings and princesses and laugh to himself whenever he made jokes.. We were led by a tiny Chunchiet man (one of the minorities groups in Cambodia but they make up the majority in Ratanakiri and are among the most deprived people in Cambodia) and his dog who ran ahead of us and who our guide told us was there in case there were still mines..