What is it Like Hiking in Virachey National Park?

You probably didn’t come to Cambodia with the intention of going on a multi-day jungle trek. Not many people do. Not many people even make it as far North-East as Banlung. Usually they stop at Kratié, or maybe they go a bit further to Mondulkiri for the elephants. But, if you’re reading this then you’re probably interested in going off the beaten track. So, how about exploring the unexplored by hiking in Virachey National Park?

Located in two often overlooked provinces of Cambodia, Ratanakiri and Stung Treng, Virachey National Park contains some of the deepest and most isolated jungles in all of Cambodia. This largely unexplored national park is known for its rich flora and fauna and as such has been made an ASEAN Heritage Park in an attempt to protect the region.

When you hike, be on the lookout for elephants, sun bears, pangolins and clouded leopards. There are also rare bird species like the giant ibises and great hornbills. We weren’t too lucky with finding these animals and birds, however, we did see endangered gibbons, jumping from tree to tree in the jungle canopy.

Unfortunately, the park is under threat from illegal logging and poaching activities, particularly from Laotian and Vietnamese workers and has been since the 1980s. However, when you hike in the national park, you probably won’t get too close to the Laos and Vietnam border. With any luck then, you’ll find (like us) that the animals are still alive and well, and the forests aren’t destroyed.

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Why Go Hiking in Virachey National Park?

If you want to get off the Cambodian tourist trail, see rare wildlife, go jungle trekking or meet people from local tribes, there isn’t a better place in Cambodia than Virachey National Park.

When we went trekking here in early 2022, there were hardly any tourists. There were six of us in our group and throughout the 3-day trek we only saw two other people trekking. So, if you want to experience a truly remote jungle experience, then this is definitely for you.

I won’t lie when I say the trek is difficult. You are surrounded by a thick jungle. At times it’s hard to see where the path is. There are many small mountains in the park, so you’re rarely walking on flat ground and when you are you’re probably ducking under bamboo or climbing over fallen trees. Add in the heat and the humidity and the trek doesn’t sound all that appealing.

But, it’s worth it to truly experience the Cambodian jungle and the local way of life in this remote region. On the trek, you’ll have plenty of chances to spot rare wildlife like the white-handed gibbons. You’ll also learn about plants and trees unique to this part of the world, like which tree can I drink water from or how can I make candles from rubber trees.

Most of all, it’s really interesting and eye-opening to speak to the local indigenous guides that live in Virachey National Park – How they live outside of the Khmer ways of life and what village and jungle life is like.

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How to Go Hiking in Virachey National Park?

From our research you cannot enter this park on your own, nor would we recommend you to. Large parts of the national park are unexplored, so you can’t simply rely on your favourite maps application for navigating here.

Instead, you can find tour companies online as well as in the city of Banlung that offer hiking in Virachey National Park. We booked ours when we arrived in Banlung through our homestay – so it’s worth asking them if they have any tours available. We stayed at Family House Homestay, which runs tours with Buffalo Tours if you’re interested!

Most tour companies offer short treks like 2D/1N and 3D/2N in the park. However, if you’re really adventurous, the 7D/6N wilderness trek from Phnom Veal Thom seems quite popular.

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Virachey National Park Tour Pricing and Details

Tours cost around $45 per night per person. However, with more people and more days, the price decreases. So, with a 6-person group on a 3D/2N trek, we ended up paying $35 per night, or $70 for the entire trek.

This price included our hammock and sleeping bag rental, which the homestay provided, food, water and transport.

Contact Buffalo Tours or Family House Homestay for more details.

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Trekking Itinerary Summary

This section provides an outline of what to expect whilst hiking in Virachey National Park on a typical 3D/2N trek.

Day 1: Entering Virachey National Park

• Start at 9:30 am with a tuk-tuk drive from the homestay to the bank of the river Tonle San. Board a motorboat that takes you to the trailhead for the trek.
• Expect around 5 hours of trekking with a few breaks including lunch.
• Arrive at the river-side campsite at around 5:00 pm where you can relax, swim and have dinner.

Day 2: Jungle Trekking, Bamboo Rafting and Gibbons

• Start the morning with breakfast, followed by bamboo rafting further upstream.
• Return to camp to pack up and begin the day of trekking.
• Trek for around 6 hours again. Expect thick jungles, rivers, montane forests and maybe even gibbons!
• Arrive at a campsite next to a waterfall at around 5:00 pm.
• Swim in the waterfall, relax and enjoy a meal of bamboo soup and rice.

Day 3: Tarantula Hunting, Cemeteries and the Return to Civilization

• Set off at 9:00 am with a short 2 and a half hour trek out of the jungle.
• Spot grazing buffalos and go tarantula hunting.
• Enjoy a local lunch at your guide’s house.
• Explore the village and indigenous cemeteries.
• Journey back to the homestay, arriving at around 14:00 pm.

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Trekking Itinerary In-Depth

This section describes our experiences whilst hiking in Virachey National Park on a 3D/2N Trek.

Day 1: Entering Virachey National Park

The trip began at 9:30 am with an arranged 40-minute tuk-tuk drive from our homestay to the bank of the river Tonle San. A small motorboat was waiting here to take us to our local guide’s village where we would start the trek. Our trekking group consisted of ten people, six tourists and four local guides, one of which spoke English.

After about 30 minutes of driving up the river, we pulled up at our guide’s farm where his children and their friends were playing in the river. We organised our packs, distributed bottles of water and found room for our sleeping bags and hammocks in our hiking packs. The four guides carried the entire group’s food between them, as well as survival equipment like machetes for clearing the paths and nets for catching fish.

Once we were all ready we set off!

We began the trek by walking along dusty roads, through local villages and farms, and passing by grazing buffalos. Eventually, the vegetation started to grow around. Trees, plants with huge leaves and the ground turned from dusty orange to a muddy brown. After walking for about 2 hours, we stopped for a large lunch of fried rice and egg.

With our bellies full of rice, we set off on the path again. Sometimes it was hard to see the path and there was a lot of ducking under bamboo and climbing over fallen trees. A lot of ducking was probably an understatement.

To make matters worse, one of those tropical storms that you hear about began whilst we were walking. The rain was relentless, absolutely soaking everything, even if you tried to find shelter under trees. There was no hope in trying to wait out the bad weather, we had to press on before it got dark. We climbed down slippery slopes and traversed muddy paths until we finally reached the campsite at around 5 pm. The rain still hadn’t let up but it had gotten lighter. Exhausted, we dropped our packs on the ground and went for a swim in the nearby river.

Later on, we put up our hammocks whilst the guides cooked dinner.

The food was great. We had bamboo soup, named such because you cook the soup in bamboo. The fragrant soup was made from chicken, eggplant, lemongrass, galangal, garlic and egg among other things. This mixture was cooked inside the bamboo, over a fire. Once the soup started steaming, they mashed it slightly with a stick, turning the ingredients into a thick and aromatic soup. We also brought dried buffalo that we bought at Banlung’s market and grilled it over the fire.

We finished the night off with some well-earned happy water (rice wine) whilst chatting under the starry night sky.

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Day 2: Jungle Trekking, Bamboo Rafting and Gibbons

At around 6 am, the guides began setting up a fire to prepare breakfast, lunch and water for the day. We had drunk all of the water we brought with us on the first day, so from now until the end of the trek, we had to make our own drinking water. Here, they do this by boiling water from the river with some tree bark that a guide harvested earlier. The resulting brew is a warm and slightly astringent tea with flavours of cinnamon and aniseed. I wouldn’t say it was terrible, but I’d rather stick to regular water.

Breakfast was a cup of slightly sweet, caramel-tasting coffee, a bowl of instant noodles with pak choi, an omelette with rice, dragon fruit and a baguette. All great fuel for what I think was the toughest day of the trek.

Following breakfast and before setting off on the day’s trek, we went bamboo rafting on the river. We walked further upstream from our camp to a small lake, where the guides had previously made some bamboo rafts. We played around on them for a while, using them to explore further up the river, before heading back to try and make our own – it’s a lot harder than it looks.

At around 11 am we set off on day 2 of the trek. We walked for about 2 hours, passing through the thick jungle into an open forest with towering trees. The trek was tough, there was lots of steep uphill and downhill, and again lots of fallen bamboo to duck under. But, when we entered this open forest with towering trees, it felt like a calming breath of fresh air.

We reached the top of a small mountain where we set up for lunch. Unfortunately, there was a lot of vegetation so we didn’t get particularly good views from the peak. Lunch was pretty good though, fried rice and noodle soup. Again, there was a lot of food. It’s worth mentioning that if you like fried rice and noodles, you are not going to starve on this trek.

After lunch, we began the walk to our next campsite. Along the way, we stopped by a rubber tree and our guide showed us how they made candles from this. First, they set the tree on fire, this causes the rubber in the tree trunk to ooze out, which they then collect into a piece of bamboo. Later on at the camp, they would pour this rubber into tin cans and set it on fire, acting as a candle – although burning rubber doesn’t smell particularly good.

We reached the campsite at around 5 pm.

The sun was setting, and we went for a swim in the pools near the waterfall. It was so refreshing and just what we needed after today’s trekking. The water was deep enough so that you could dive in, and the waterfall gave your shoulders a well-deserved massage.

Dinner was the same as the day before, bamboo soup and rice. But, it was still really good and there was plenty of it to fill you up. We finished the night drinking happy water and playing cards by rubber candlelight.

Day 3: Tarantula Hunting, Cemeteries and the Return to Civilization

The final day and the easiest! We had already put in most of the work on Day 2 into getting out of the national park, so it was now only a short 2-hour walk to our guide’s village.

We set off at around 9:00 am after a breakfast of scrambled eggs with a baguette, fried rice and pineapple. After about an hour of walking through the jungle, the trees started to clear and the dusty plains from the first day returned.

We saw lots of buffalo grazing, and our guide said this was the best spot to look for tarantulas. Tarantulas live in holes in the ground, and our guide showed us one which had since been abandoned. We spent maybe 20 minutes, searching for tarantula burrows until finally, our guide spotted one with eggs in it. Our guide picked up one of the eggs with his stick, causing the tarantula to grip the egg in an attempt to protect it.

After the tarantula hunting, we walked back to our guide’s house and where we began the trek to have our final meal. Lunch again was some fried rice with egg and fruits such as passionfruit, rambutan and pineapple.

Following lunch, our guide had one final thing to show us before we headed back to the homestay. Cemeteries.

A short boat journey down the river brought us to a slightly overgrown beach, with steps leading up a steep leaf-covered bank to a forest. Amidst the trees, we spotted wooden totems, small walls and trinkets of sorts. Our guide explained these were the graves that the people of the village used to remember their dead. The graves are dotted throughout the forest and all have objects which were important to the dead family member.

One such grave had two large wooden statues, decorated with sunglasses, standing over a fenced-off hut. Inside the hut were things like the deceased’s mobile phone, cans of beer and their old motorbike. This was one of the better gravesites, but it seemed as if many others had gone into disrepair or that they had been forgotten. There were also skulls of sacrificed buffalos which appeared to be watching over the cemetery.

After exploring the cemetery, we decided it was probably time to leave. We got back on the boat and our guide took us further downstream to where a tuk-tuk was waiting to take us back to the homestay.

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Final Thoughts

Sweaty, tough and rewarding. All words I’d use to describe what it’s like hiking in Virachey National Park. Most of the time, you’re walking down paths that have to be cleared by a machete. There will be sticks and thorns scraping your legs, it might rain and there will be mosquitoes. But, you’re in the wilderness, far away from the business of everyday life, truly immersed in the jungle. When you reach the campsite at the end of the day, and you hear the cool refreshing rivers and waterfalls flowing, it’s easy to see it was worth it.

However, I would only recommend the trek if you’re good with walking up lots of hills, good with bugs, sleeping in hammocks and are happy to forgo the comforts of a hotel room.

If this sounds like the trek for you, then contact Family House Homestay or their dedicated trekking service, Buffalo Tours.

Thanks for reading!