🏍️ Harvesting Illegal Logging Scraps 🪵 Swimming With Monkey-B 🏊♂️ & Other Things From Life In The Cardamom Mountains
The Honda Cub is a trusty steed when it comes to hauling the illegal logging scraps out of the river behind our house, but 90cc of engine is barely enough.
Ecosystem Future Unknown 🤷♂️
For weeks I've been hearing chainsaws running all night long across the river, and judging by the distance of the headlamps I could see, the guys were no more than 100 meters away from the main river. I personally know the guys who are doing it, but illegal logging is so profitable that it's often deadly for anyone in Cambodia that tries to stop it.
On this day Monkey-B and I went for a swim just like other days, but I decided we should cross over the river and hike all the way up one of the tributaries to see what kind of trees were lost in the last few weeks. The water level is very low at the moment, and this makes trekking upstream much easier with little risk of flash floods.
I left my camera behind when we crossed over, and as we hiked, we took occasional dips. I noticed lots of fresh-smelling wood planks and timbers all along the way, and I felt guilty to leave them in the river, so I half-carried and floated several of the timbers down to the main river, not realizing it had been nearly three hours and I hadn't drank a drop of water.
After arriving home and using the Super Cub to haul the scraps up the hill to our place, I realized how dehydrated I was and also how physically draining lugging wood through the forest and creeks had been. I tried to make it fun for Monkey-B though, and when we reached the mouth of the main river, I let float atop a few of the planks and sail the river a bit. Sad to see the rapid loss of such an incredible forest, but it's not my country and never will be, so I must make peace with the freedom Cambodians have to destroy the last of the natural resources in order to fund endless trips to the local casino.
Operation Fence Kind Of Stalled 🧱
My brother-in-law is staying with us at the moment to help build a fence on three sides of our property, and for the first few days things were going well. Now the #2 ranking soldier has informed us of where we can build the fence along the old road, and it will cause us to lose around a meter of land in many places, not very agreeable. All the other soldiers agreed with our intended fence location, but this one guy has different ideas, and also wants us to stop 2 meters short of the property boundary at the back where he once owned the land that bordered ours.
I don't know why he has such strong feelings about a piece of land he no longer owns, but we do know he sold it to pay gambling debts, and then recently one of his houses burnt down. I assume he is trying to make us come up with an idea to pay him a few hundred bucks so we can build where the property boundaries actually are.
The whole situation is a mess, and now my brother-in-law is too scared to dig postholes on that side of our property for fear of drawing the wrath of this one particular soldier, who I should mention we gave $60 of clothes and blankets to the night his house burned down, and now all of a sudden he is being a total prick to us. The old expression "what comes around goes around" must have never passed through this village.
Well, at least I've got two beautiful daughters and a loving wife, even if they all do occasionally think I'm nuts. For now we're discussing the concept of building a fence with only two sides, and even though it kind of defeats the purpose by leaving one side completely open, I want to solve the dispute first before installing any posts along the border of the old road and the back of our property.
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Even in Suriname illegal deforestation is happening by wood companies, where some of them aren't even registered. Earlier this year some were caught, but it's only a handful that gets caught. Even the authorities their hand are tied, because of corrupt individuals in "high" places. Really heartbreaking when I read those articles.
One of the good things about the Americas in general is that the population boom has only happened in the last several hundred years due to slavery and colonization. The wrongs of this are countless, but one good things is that before all the forests were destroyed, the concept of preservation and environmentalism had come into existence. In Asia, Europe, and Africa, they'd already cut the majority of their forests down long before the American content was even known.
Suriname's illegal logging problems will eventually catch up to it, but there is still time to save the forest there, but once it's lost it's nearly impossible to make a return.
That's what Joel and I keep reminding ourselves of. We probably wouldn't have existed the way we are or have met each other if it didn't happen. Yes, what happened was atrocious, but it's not as black and white as some debaters would like to have us to believe.
I hope that the money hungry corrupted ones will be stopped before it goes so far though.
That sad to have such sucky neighbor. I shall pray get win big at the casino so he move away from you. What goes around comes round ☺️ you gave him 60, so he shall receive 6000 and gtfo 👍
@srey-yu looks like a fully grown up girl in the last picture!
Haha, well, perhaps one day the guy will be broke enough to sell us the forest across the river for a few hundred bucks, haha. Apparently he owns it, so he has basically has control over the number one reason people come here to visit. If he ever gets desperate, he'll just clearcut the forest and then everyone will watch their houses slowly fall into the river due to the increased erosion.
Srey-Yuu is a young lady whether I like it or not, but at least there are no teenage boys in this village for me to have to threaten 🤣.
Sometimes people don't know the meaning of respect and understanding. At the end of the day we should be kind to everybody even those who did wrong to us. Have a nice day.☺️
I totally agree, I never admonish the folks in our village, but it's sad to see so many kids going without an education and basic manners because the parents are laser-focused on cutting down the forest to pay for gambling excursions to the casino. The kids here will some day be without a forest and without any inheritance because of these careless choices.
Awwt sad to know that😢
🙏🙏🙏
Is it a honda 2 stroke, I just saw one like this
I wish it was, I prefer to ride two-strokes. and in the USA I still have my old two-stroke Vespa. My bike in Cambodia is a Honda Super Cub 90, but it's a four-stroke.
Oh yes, I also have an antique vespa at home, it was around the 80s
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The illegal logging will do a lot of damage to the environment.
Short-term profits always take priority over long-term concepts here. The very land our whole village lives on borders the river, and despite being surrounded by forest, they focus on cutting trees near the river, and someday this shortsightedness will cause us all to watch our land fall into the river because of uncontrolled erosion.
The first photo is beautiful and nice shots! Who got it for you?
You took the shots of course, but who asked you to take them and told you what angle to snap from 😁?
Ee…, it’s not sure.
Yay! 🤗
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