This morning it was up, once again, bright and early in order to part ways with Pon and Thora while we headed into the further wilds of northern Cambodia. We said our goodbyes to Pon, thanked her for all her help and hope to see her on next year's build or at least back at the Tabitha office in Phnom Penh. Then we packed up our new van with all our stinky build clothes, left over baguettes and water, and all our other crap, and headed northwest towards Chomng Ksant, and then onwards to the village of Tram Poung, roughly 80 km from Tbeang Meanchey. We were blessed with a good road all the way, with minor slowdowns for cow crossings, and one very abrupt swerve to avoid a dog. As much as I don't want to hit a dog, I would rather us not make that sort of violent swerve again on these roads!!
Tram Poung is a widening in the road with a couple of store fronts, a gas station, and an inordinate number of gem dealers for the size of the place! The mines here are only operational during the wet season when there is enough water to spray the soils and laterites with large hoses to dislodge the alluvial zircon and some sapphire. Looking at the geological map, there is no evidence of basalt within this area, so the zircon must be coming from basalts either to the north in Thailand, or from the basalts south of Tbeang Meanchey. The rocks around Tram Poung are all Jurassic and Triassic sediments, definitely not an original source of the zircons.
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| Tram Poung town, 80 km northwest of Tbeang Meanchey |
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| Dermot and I looking at cut natural zircons from Mr. Poung |
As is done in Cambodia, and I suspect anywhere else in the world where you sit down with gem or mineral dealers in remote areas, coffee and tea are provided and the selection and bargaining process begins. Votha took us to see 2 gem dealers and cutters - two brothers who own store fronts a couple of doors down from one another - Mr. Leko and Mr. Poung. Both men had glass display cases showcasing cut stones from around Cambodia and abroad, as well as a selection of random rough material - tektites, quartz from Takeo, amethyst from near Ban Lung, agates from the river beds, etc. Sometimes these random piles at the bottoms of display cases are the most interesting to us. For the regular gem buyer, they want what is on the top shelf, all the pretty cut material, but the rough is often the more unusual and scientifically-interesting. And also a hell of a lot cheaper!
Once coffee and tea were distributed, we were brought a large selection of cut and rough zircon. The rough is very obviously water-worn and has traveled following its emplacement along with the basalts from which they were later weathered. They are quite smooth, anhedral with very rare rounded bipyramidal terminations. However the colour is fantastic - dark red-orange to a lighter brown-orange and pretty much inclusion-free. Expensive rough for research but great if you wanted it for cutting and facetting. However, it's always difficult to get across the point that we don't want the material to cut into gems, that it's going to be sliced and crushed and analysed all in the name of esoteric science! I need to learn how to say "give me your garbage material" in Khmer.
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| Raw, cut natural (red-brown) and heat-treated rough (whiteish-blue) zircons from Tram Poung |
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| Cut natural-colour zircons from Tram Poung |
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| Votha and I checking out cut natural zircons in Tram Poung |
Dermot and I both selected cut stones from both brothers - a couple of larger stones each for our respective collections and then smaller ones for ourselves. Prices ranged from $1.5 to $7 a carat, depending on the size of the stone. I bought a selection of 1 and 2 carat stones for myself and others at home, and the ones for the mineral collection are 10 carats. But at those prices, you can't go wrong. The stones are mined, cut and polished right there in Tram Poung by the dealers from which we bought them. Mr. Leko and his partner, Mr. Dee, process 30 stones a day. That's a lot of gems per year! Many of them get sent for sale at the gem market in Chanthaburi, Thailand, where I am very sure the prices are at least 10 times as high as we paid.
After negotiating for cut, natural zircons, Mr. Poung took one of the stones and brought it over to a gas burner to show us the colour change. In only 2 minutes, the stone, which was originally dark brown-red, was turned colourless. Fast!! This is in an oxidizing environment however, but Votha says that in a reducing environment as they do in Ban Lung, they only change to a very, very pale blue colour, not dark enough to be worth treating for the general market. As far as I'm concerned, the natural colour is more beautful.
We also went through an elaborate bartering process for a bag of rough zircon. By this time, we had an audience, and more miners had shown up to offer up their findings - some large rough zircon about 2.5 inches in length and quite gemmy, a bag with 3 lbs of rough material, and one miner with some rough, quite ugly yellow-green sapphire. Dermot and I split 400 grams of rough zircon for research, and then I bought 2 small lots of rough sapphire for research as well. It will be interesting to compare these with the ones that we found in BoLoei in Ratanakiri. As with Ratanakiri, there is no market for sapphire in Preah Vihear province - the material is too infrequent and the colours are not conducive to cut stones. Some of the material might make nice cabochons, but not facetted stones.
Before having some lunch/breakfast, we stopped at Mr. Leko's store front to take some pictures of the cutting and facetting - all done outside, by hand - and for Dermot to purchase some tektites and for me to grab a ridiculously-priced facetted smokey quartz from the Takeo granitic pegmatite, just south of Phnom Penh. A whole $5 for a stone about 25 carats. :)
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| Mr. Dee faceting Tram Proung zircons |
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| Mr. Dee faceting Tram Proung zircons |
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| Mr. Leko doing doing the first cut on a zircon on a dope stick |
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| Mr. Dee doing the first cut on a zircon on a dope stick |
At that point in time, after a quick bite to eat consisting of the leftover baguettes from the build and leftover random fixings (the pate went the way of the dodo - I opened both jars and both had white fuzzy stuff on the tops - damn!) we jumped back in the van for the long drive to Ban Lung, back the 80 to near Tbeang Meanchey and we are now on a mostly okay road headed directly west to Stung Treng. This was a difficult part of the trip to predict - everyone I talked to about this road gave me a different answer when I asked what its condition was - paved? not paved? pot-holed? tarred? Well, for anyone who ever needs or wants to know, the road between Tbeang Meanchey and Stung Treng is dirt but fairly smooth for the first 15 or 20 km, and then is roughly paved for another 50 km. We are currently about 2/3 of the way along the road and have yet to hit any major roadwork or barriers. More updates as the drive unfolds before us.
continued, 3:15pm
Arriving at the Mekhong River crossing after a dusty, long drive was pretty exciting. The Mekhong at Stung Treng is quite wide - a lazy, grey vastness stretcihng north to Laos and west aross to Stung Treng. There is no bridge - crossing the river requires a 1/2 hour ferry ride. As a ferry was just departing as we reached the landing, we had to put the van into the queue and wait for the next one. It gave us a chance to walk around the market area, and watch one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time - the perfect candidate for a Darwin Award. A brick truck had tried to drive down the (muddy) bank of the river, presumably to off-load bricks into a boat or get onto a barge. Well, a large lorry + muddy river bank = disaster. It had slipped into the river where it got stuck! There were very embarrassed Khmers standing around and directly other people who were removing the bricks from the truck and loading them elsewhere. It was too funny and they were not exactly happy with us taking photos! But how can you not?
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| Brick truck stuck in the mud and water on the Mekhong River - LOL!!! |
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| Cow watching the stuck, sunk brick truck in the Mekhong - it had the same thought we did - WTF? |
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| Brick truck stuck in the Mekhong being unloaded, photo from the ferry |
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| Susan (waving) on the ferry crossing the Mekhong River |
The ferry ride across the Mekhong took 30 minutes, so Rory and I got out of the van and climbed to the captain's deck with Votha to have a bit of a "Titanic" moment! Complete with Angkor beers of course. It was a relief to get a bit of a breeze at the top of the ferry as it is quite hot and sticky here at the present. We talked with Votha about the cost of vehicles in Camboda. Specifically the plethora of large Lexus SUVs that you see around towns. In Canada, such a thing is way out of most people's budgets. As it is here too, for the most part since the disparity in economic levels here is absurd, but I was shocked at the price differnece - here, a Lexus SUV costs $12,000 USD. A Toyota Highlander about $15,000. What?! How is it that the price in Canada can be so far off? Import taxes?
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| On the ferry crossing the Mekhong River to Stung Treng |
Off the ferry and back on the (paved) road, high ho, high ho, it's off to Ban Lung we go.
Continued: 7pm - safe and sound at the TreeTop EcoLodge in Ban Lung!!
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| TreeTop EcoLodge, Ban Lung - you can find me in bungalow #16! |
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