Kirirom round trip

Kirirom round trip

You can watch us riding scooters on the path back from the peak

https://youtu.be/eqKIJba-CKA

Day trip from Phnom Penh to the Kirirom Park. Unplanned. We decided over pizza we were heaving on Friday evening.

We met at the Chip Mong Noro Mall BKK1 and drove off 5:30am.

Stopped for lunch at Lotus Coffee half way. Coffee is around 2$ while noodles around 3-5$. If you stop here go to the back garden behind the restaurant. It is better protected from dust and street noise.

Around 10am we arrived at the Kirirom Park.

We visited Kirirom Hillside Resort to check if it is a nice place to stay perhaps in future. Unfortunately this place seams left to it's devices. One can see there was quite an ambition in the initial concept and scale of the place is also quite impressive. However due to lack of guests and poor maintenance it doesn't seam to be best place to stay.

Next we drive up the hill for a coffee at vKirirom Pine Resort. This place is clearly better maintained and busier. Restaurant had few other guests and coffee was actually very nice at 2.5$ per cup.
We walked around to check camping area which unfortunately is very packed with tents one right next to another. At 24$ for double tent this is unlikely an option for us either.

We tried to rent scooter as we didn't want to drive our small car around the park however scooters were all either rented out or poor condition and resort didn't want to rent them out for use outside of premises die to concern of breakdown.

Ultimately we decided to just drive our car around the park. Visited Kirikom Lake. Next we tried to drive to the Waterfall just north of the lake but this road was impossible to pass and we had to leave the car and walk for the last 1km.

Kirirom waterfall was very dry and all left was just a narrow tiny creek. Water was brown and didn't feel very welcoming. This area seams to be very well developed with wooden decks fully encapsulating both sides of the creek waiting for visitors to rent them for an hour or a day.

Next we returned to the car and drove to the the southern end of the waterfall where a new pagoda was erected and series of decks / restaurants as well. All equally empty with handful of tourists.

Our next target was to visit the Kirirom peak. There are no paths indicated on Google maps however we managed to spot some paths on google satellite views. Paths were to small for the car so we decided to drive to the large artificial lake formed recently after new dam was erected.

A tip which we learned later... All small paths are mapped on open street map. So switch to this on wikilock. Unfortunately this one is only available online but if you don't swap back and forth between maps but keep that one it will remain in the app memory and you should be able to follow it even without reception.

Finally we are now arriving to the part of the story where out GPS trail actually starts.

As you might be able to see on satelitę photos there is a shallow river crossing at the location where are path starts.
We didn't want to drive across this. Perhaps there is another way to reach the other side (over the dam?) but we didn't try.

Instead we had lunch at the location we parked the car and after thanks to one of our friends who was Khmer we rented two scooters from local residents.

We rode the scooters back to the main road and back to the paths I mentioned earlier that we saw on satellite.

After around 6km of tarmac we reached the starting point of this path.
We rode the path initially relatively flat.
After about 1km we turned sharp right on t junction and again right after another 1km.

The last part of the road was bit more steep and road was highly eroded by water most likely during last wet season.
There were few small detours being naturally created by others avoiding some of the worst eroded sections.

After around 1km climb we reached first peak - where a telecom mast is installed.

We kept going for another few hundred meters till the path died up. we left out scooters here and walked up to gain around 30m more height to the top of the Kirirom peak (absolute elevation 800m above sea level).

Unfortunately the view is heavily obstructed by dense trees. It is possible to see horizon and hills rolling bellow, but there is no exposure rather some listed sightlines in between branches and leafs.

On way back we stopped at the rocky cliffs holing to find the picturesque rock from the official photographs of the park but it wasn't there.

If anyone reading this knows where exactly is this famously rock please let me know in the comments I would love to go back and find it.

This area of the rocky cliffs btw is quite nice if you want to hide away and have a picnic alone.

Unfortunately we could see signs of bone fire and some garbage here and there which is sad yo see in such a natural otherwise setting.

We also saw a lot of areas in the park being burned down .
Many trees had its bottom 2-4m burned and charcoaled.
Many trees have been also chopped down.

One quite disappointing practice seams to be chopping down tree to create a road barricade.

In the areas of waterfalls there are quite large numbers of locals on scooters trying to hunt down any tourists and escort them to their mini restaurants / terraces along the creek.

After photo session near the rocky cliffs we started our road back.
Scooters had very poor breaking and we had to ride very carefully and avoid gaining any speed. Rear breaks could the used as the foot level was hitting the ground even before break was engaged. Front breaks even when fully engaged were not able to fully resist G force.

Riding first gear with zero throttle engine breaking and fully engaged front break was the rule of the game.

This might sound like the hill was steep but actually it wasn't. Just scooters were really bad condition and we were two people at each bike.

After 1k of bit steeper and eroded section road leveled up and that is the part you can watch in video.

We returned to tarmac and after another few km were back at the car park where were rented scooters.

We didn't stop here this time but instead crossed the river crossing. Water was 5cm deep and biked had no problem to cross it

On the other side we climbed up by about 30m again and soon reached the artificial lake.

Lake was almost completely drained. We could see trunks of dead trees normally hidden underwater now however dead projections from the mirror flat water bed.

After second to last photo shoot of the day we turned back and rode into the dam. Shoot few more triple sun 🌞 shots and jumped back on scooters to ride out last section of the day and close the circuit.

For the pleasure of scoters we paid 10$ for each scooter rental. This is very expensive considering we used them for 2h only. In Phnom Penh rental of scooter is around 6$ for 24h and scooters are in much better condition.

Considering however we didn't do any preparations and rented from local people directly their own scooters i think it's still totally fine.

Food prices at the restaurant where we ate our lunch and rented bikes are also quite steep. All except two dishes are priced at 12$ and up.

The two dishes under 12 are simple noddle with egg and meat, and similar rice based dish. Although this dish is simple it was actually very large and filling and priced at around 4$ felt like a bargain considering all the rest was 12+.

For more budget conscious tourists instant noodle packages are available for less than 1$

This bring me to the end of the kirirom stay. After around 7 hours spent in the park we begun descent down to the base of the range.

Our morning journey took us on the national road 4 with heavy traffic of trucks and scooters.
For our evening ride back to Phnom Penh we decided to take newly opened highway E4.

For our driver this was first in the lifetime experience and he was speed high driving around 140kmph.

After around 1.5h we nearly crashed where some service vehicles parked in the night on the left (fast line). This car was a black pickup track and has lights off. It was parked on the left direction bent.

Ultimately most stupid and dangerous place to park a service car in highway.

To defence of the idiot who did park this car there I have to say he did put cones being his car. But out of all the cones he put most were already rode over. One of this fallen cones got under our car (we didn't know what was that noise). Second after we saw on cone that was still standing and we hit that one and took it off. Cones were actually low quality and not reflective.

This situation took place just 5k before the final toll gate so we made quite a bit of scene at the till gates telling highway officials that there will be an accident any second as there is black car parked on the fast lane in the shadow of the bent and without any lights on.

Apparently this is some action to catch someone we were told.

Well good luck, hopefully you catch whoever you need to catch before you kill some innocent travellers who you don't care about.

Still long way to go!