We get up early and climb at 6.30am into a jeep with N. We will be driving far out of the city, trekking through jungle to a mysterious and overgrown monument to the creatures of the wilds, followed by visiting an enormous rock carved stone Buddha, a stream beneath which are carved no fewer than a thousand ancient 'lingas' (small circles representing people or family clans), bathe at the foot of an enormous waterfall, visit the ancient ruins of a 'lady temple' built to honour the brave women who fought in the ancient wars against Thailand, which is carved out of pink sandstone, race around the land mine museum in the ten minutes before it closes and - at some point - eat something.
It is a long and action packed day. The highlight though, for me, was the jungle trekking. And this is where meeting N is such a stroke of good fortune. This could be a walk to look at some stone statues. Or it could be an adventure. And N is in her element. So it's definitely the latter.
When we go to the temple, later in the day, N tells us about the carvings and points out the pink sandstone, but her attention and enthusiasm was much better captured by the flock of parakeets I point out in the nearby trees. Faced with nature, N is passionate. She can tell you wonderful things about species you have never heard of. She can identify a mating call from a danger signal, a poisonous mushroom from a delicious one and several shades of in-between.
We clamber out of the jeep, already refreshed because N has pointed out a species of red banana, which grows only on this mountain and we have stopped to get some. It tastes firmer than it's smaller yellow counterpart, though is itself smaller than the variety we buy from the supermarket in the UK. South East Asian bananas are generally sweeter than at home - but this species draws closer in taste and texture to the UK version (itself imported of course, from South Africa).
We begin our track. N points out long thin swirling patterns in the sand.
"Snake" she says. When I look excited she laughs, "not now", she says, "they scared away."
I am sorry that my stomping feet have scared the snakes so I walk a little more softly. I ask N whether we should step harder to warn them we are coming.
"I am not scared," I explain, "I think they are beautiful. But I still don't want to step on one."
N tells me that she used to be afraid of snakes until she worked with a UK team on a documentary. She learned a lot about snakes then and realised that snakes are too intelligent not to realise that, even given their venom, humans remain much bigger animals. A snake will not necessarily bite you unless you startle it. Even then, its first priority is to get away. The only time, says N, that a snake is guaranteed to bite you, is when it is protecting its eggs. I think of cows, who will attack if you stand between the mother and baby, of she-bears, at her most dangerous if you injure her cub, of A, shouting and chasing stray dogs she is normally afraid of, in defence of her cat. Of my mother, shouting at my school headmaster because he allowed another child to pick on me. I think, just fleetingly, of the proud look on the guide's face as he stood in Vietnam's Independence Palace in front of a set of hollowed out elephants feet. Two small, two large, two in the middle.
"They are real," he had said, "a whole family."
I gulp, and tell N about the captive python in the Mekong Delta and how sad I was to hang it around my neck like jewellery.
"Yes," said N sadly, "the python is the most gentle of all of the snakes. So it is easy for humans to catch them."
I am ashamed of my species, the only one of all the living things which kills and captures even when it isn't hungry.
We continue. M spots a mushroom growing in the shadow of a large palm leaf,
"Ha!" She says, picking it carefully, avoiding the dense web of a nearby spider, "this one is good to eat". She breaks a piece off and chews it happily. We hesitate. "It's OK" she says, "it's not poisonous".
If anyone knows what they are talking about in this area it is N. Even so, we each take the tiniest scrap of mushroom, and chew it carefully. "There," says N, "now we will all be sick in the jungle together."
And she walks on, chortling.
Along the ground, built low against the base of tree and plant roots, are spiders webs. They are small but so tightly woven as to be almost opaque. They are ghostly white draperies, each with a hole in the middle, around which is a cleverly constructed woven tunnel, like a funnel.
"For him to hide in" says N.
"Isn't the funnel webbed spider supposed to be the most poisonous spider on earth?" M asks, in an ever so slightly tremulous whisper.
"Oh yes. Very poisonous" says N cheerfully, striding past the myriad of white funnels at her feet. "But this is not one", she adds as an afterthought. M visibly relaxes.
"Are these snake tracks too?" I ask, hopefully, pointing at more swirling patterns in the sand. N looks.
"No. A worm I think. We have big worms. This goes too much in circles".
She grins. "A snake would not go in circles. A snakes would go straight across. It knows where it goes. Snakes are clever."
As if to prove her words we have not gone much further when M suddenly gives a shout of surprise and then a hasty jump backward. A long, very thin, yellow snake is wending his way rapidly across the path. Nearly half of the front of his body is lifted off the ground and around his miniature head (he's a very small snake) there is a wide oval shaped halo, like wings. He does not so much glide along the ground, as jump and glide a few feet above it.
"Related," says N, as we watch him make his way to the tip of a tall, thin stalk in the greenery at the side if the path, "to the flying snake."
She has told us about the flying snake before. The full grown flying snake can launch itself from a high wall and use it's hood to glide it's way to the ground, capturing prey on the way. Sure enough, we watch as the snake, a smaller, tamer version of this, manages to 'leap' from the tip of one plant onto the leaf of another until gradually it disappears from view.
"Not poisonous", says N.
"Well that's lucky," says M.
But N is crouching over another mushroom, tearing it and putting pieces into her mouth. The mushroom is a bright pink, the sort of shade that wouldn't look amiss among the audience for a ladies only live performance of Dirty Dancing.
"N," I say sternly, "are you trying to have a psychedelic experience?"
"No" says N through her laughter, "is not magic. Is nice."
"Are you sure?" I say taking the chunk she tears off for me, "Can you see any pixies?"
She hands a piece to N and waits while we tentatively eat it, then leads the way forward.
"Now," she says over her shoulder, "we can all see pixies."
I ask more about the spiders. There are so many funnel webs here that it almost forms an unbroken shroud of white at the edge of the path. N says that they are black and white striped spiders which are harmless but which can be as big as a human hand when they reach maturity. Excitedly, I start to scour the webs for their owners.
"These ones must be babies" I say disappointedly, "I can only see small ones."
"Thank goodness" says M, fervently.
I look sideways at him. I wonder, suddenly, whether he is enjoying this as much as I am.
We pass a line of jungle ants. N points out that every so often along the line there is a much larger ant. The larger ones, she tells us, lead the way back to the queen. The smaller ones carry the food. The larger ants are black and bulbous. They have sharp pincers. So it hurts if they bite you.
M takes a step back. I smile a little, recalling the strange hopping dance he performed when the smaller ants bit his foot in Moi Ne. Then I remember the ants eating the cockroach alive in O's back yard. I stop smiling and step over the ants very carefully. Spiders are one thing. But ants are not to be messed with.
Suddenly N stops us, pointing up into the trees. The branches are swaying wildly, as though recently disturbed. I look but I can't see anything but greenery.
"A monkey!" She says, "I think, but...wait!"
There is a violent swaying of trees and, there among the protesting leaves, I catch a fleeting glimpse of a long, black tail. Then it disappears.
"Not monkey!" breathes N, "squirrel! BIG squirrel."
The way she says it makes my mind boggle a little, and I am sidetracked slightly by the huge, Godzilla style squirrel which tramples through my minds eye, destroying civilisations. But before I can process this, the creatures move again and this time I get a good view. The squirrel is black and about the size of a monkey. It has a white strip on the underside of it's chin and a long furry tail, more like a cats than the wider, fluffier tails of its British counterparts. There are two of them.
"I am so glad to see that" says N, in paroxysms of excitement, "it is very rare. And very rare too, to see it here."
We wait for a while, and the squirrels afford us several brief glimpses as they switch, nimbly between trees but, as if they know we are watching, they refuse to pose and eventually we move on.
I see tracks in the sand as we move deeper into the jungle.
"What kind of animal made that?" I breathe, fully immersed in the thrill of this jungle adventure, and fully expecting to encounter a yeti. Or at the very least, a unicorn.
"Hmmm, let's see" says N, coming to my side to peer at the print. "I not sure. Tiger, maybe?"
The fact that she has barely uttered the words before she bursts into hearty laughter at her own joke rather ruins any chance she may have had at convincing us.
"A shame," I say later to M when N explains that the jungle on the mountain was once home to elephants, cobras and tigers, but that the war, followed by the settlement of humans, scared then away. "I would have liked a tiger. Not to be bitten by one. But to see one."
M rolls his eyes.
N does stop, however, a little later, to examine a dropping which seed to have been left by an animal.
"Maybe a wild dog" she concludes. "Or a tiger." But we are wise to that now.
Finally we arrive at the sight our trekking was intended to get us to. (It has taken a while due to N and I being keen to examine spider webs and mushrooms, and the time we spent staring at the elusive squirrels. Also I have insisted on wading through streams instead of clambering round them.) There, in the depths of the jungle and near the summit of the mountain are several magnificent statues carved into the huge boulders which litter the mountain. Two lions growl at us from their perch on a miniature cliff face. An elephant surveys us nobly and opposite him crouches a bull. There is also a frog, though this seems a little out of place. It is the size of one of the lions.
N explains that these are the most powerful creatures of the forest and that this is a monument built to honour them.
The statues have the same overgrown, moss covered mystery as the temples of Angkor. There is a sense of calm in the clearing and we stay for a while.
This is nearly the end of our trekking - we will climb to the top of the biggest boulder yet to see a magnificent reclining Buddha, we will play with two fluffy puppies at the restaurant where we gorge ourselves on morning glory, and we will swim, fish biting our legs, at the foot of a huge and majestic waterfall. But the trekking remains the most memorable moment. And the jungle knew it.
So it saved the best till last.
As we retrace our steps, and are nearly all the way back to the jeep, N suddenly grabs me and points into the trees on the near horizon. There, in a high branch, carefully camouflaged so that it takes us quite some time to see him - is an enormous eagle.
"The king of the birds" says N, reverently.
As we watch, the eagle spreads his wings and takes a brief flight to one of the higher branches, where he turns his back on us, sullenly, as if offended. With his wings outstretched, even at a distance I can tell that he nearly rivals a hand arm span.
Finally, as we stand still, watching and, for some reason, holding our breath, he spreads his wings and swoops.
"Hunting" says N, meaningfully.
There is a distant screech. Something didn't survive that encounter.
When we arrive home, many hours later, we are still gritty with jungle sand, despite our dip in the ice cold waterfall. I am clutching, like a child returning home from the seaside, a small plastic bag containing a hard, black mushroom, and a selection of small red beans.
The mushroom I will have to discard. But the beans can be washed, dried and polished to make the traditional jewellery I have seen being sold on Cambodian markets.
Unlike the unfortunate Python in Vietnam, this is a piece of the jungle I can wear round my neck and retain a clear conscience.
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