About Yaklom Hill Lodge, Ratanakiri, Cambodia
How have we got into today?
Yaklom Hill Lodge commenced its operation on 16 November 2002. However, preparation of such operation dates back to some time in 1997 when the now plot of land (located in Yaklom commune of Ban Lung district, and 5 km. east of Ban Lung town on National Road number 78) was acquired. At that time, as the fallow land for a number of years, vegetation in the area had largely suffered annually by serious burning, animal grazing, and tree cutting. The plants of the same plot in 1997 were far different from what you see today - most Imperata and other vigorous weeds dominating the area and suppressing almost all the tree seedlings from emerging.
In order to promote growing of all species of trees, most of our works in 1997, therefore, are selective weedings to remove shading effect from all tree seedlings (and other that we thought are non-weed species) so that they can thrive. Only manual and mechanical weeding methods were applied, and no chemical weedicide was used. Some Imperata areas were transplanted with some species of tree seedlings in order to suppress this kind of vigorous weed from growing. We were asked by many locals, and even people in town who were curious of what we were doing and popped in our place at that time, as to why we kept the trees as most of them have little value in terms of construction prices. Our answers (about which someone still doubted nowadays) were : we love nature, we love trees, trees can cool down our place, trees provide habitat for animals, trees help conserve ground water -among others. Sometimes we felt a bit hurt when someone laughed at us and at what we were doing. “What (cash) crops do you grow?” asked by passers-by, and my answer “Trees.” seemed to be a common greeting everyday, leaving some people wondering!
The outcome : trees, trees, trees, and trees have flourished in our place, and they have been protected from fire, and other forms of destruction. Even some unwanted trees species which locals said they are useless now have grown tall, and that many had a chance to flower. Animals, obviously birds, have peaceful shelter to live on, and we do not permit any kind of hunting to take place in any part of the lodge area. Although they are not normally seen everyday, our staff has spotted (or heard their voices) : barking deer, wild chicken, wild pig, monkey, lots of squirrels; apart from birds, in the lodge area. So far, around 60 species of birds have been sighted in the lodge areas.
The first construction is building the first cottage (namely : O'kachanh) that took place in 1998 on the empty area of the hill side. Later other constructions were gradually implemented year by year, incorporating the same principle that no trees would be cut down to make way for such construction.
Currently, we have 15 wooden cottages (1 triple, 2 doubles, 7 twins, 3 singles, 1 family cottage-for 4 persons, and 1 traditional hill tribe house-for 8 persons), scattering along the hill side overlooking another hill, all with private bathroom.
Our Principles
Our principles in running the lodge are so modest and simple : keeping all trees while doing our business. To put it in a bit of technicality, however, they are :-
1. Conserve local environment and ecology by protecting vegetations in the lodge areas, and habitats of wild animals.
2. Promote sustainable cultural- and eco-tourism with participation of local villagers.
3. Contribute to local communities in support of community development.
Why Green Globe, Ecoclub and other responsible websites?
Green Globe 21 : To help us move with our principles in the sustainable direction, we thought we need to seek some technical and informative assistance, and recognition, from those who know. We started with Green Globe 21, which is an Australian based organization working to certifying operations in sustainable travel and tourism, that we think share the same in our principles.
After 1 year as Affiliate member of Green Globe 21; and another 12 months of data collection in benchmarking period and subsequently an assessment; Yaklom Hill Lodge was recently certified by Green Globe 21 as “Benchmarked Accommodation”. We are very proud of this achievement and significant step. Yaklom Hill Lodge is the first and the only one establishment in the country to receive this worldwide recognition of sustainable travel and tourism certification program.
More information on Green Globe 21 can be found in : www.greenglobe.org Although our 2006 Benchmarked Certification expired on 8 March 2007 and we are no longer having membership with GreenGlobe, Yaklom Hill Lodge operation still strongly follows its principles, as well as its environmental and social commitment policy.
Ecoclub : We were also approved by the International Ecotourism Club -the Athens based organization- to be its “Ecolodge Member”. With the membership of this “eco network”, we think that we could do more in promoting sustainable ecotourism in our areas, and this can also help us in appealing and targeting the “green market” and others alike.
More information of International Ecotourism Club can be found in www.ecoclub.com
Responsibletravel.com : Yaklom Hill Lodge has been accepted by the ResponsibleTravel.com Team as ecolodge member, and is now listed in this website. Yaklom Hill Lodge was also once nominated to the First Choice Award competition organized by responsibletravel.com and the Time magazine. More information about “Holidays that give the world a break” around the world in : www.responsibletravel.com
Yaklom Hill Lodge is also a member of 2 other responsible travel related organizations : Southeast Asia Travel Association (SEATA) and Peaceful World Travel Organization. These 2 organizations are operating non-profit websites and promote responsible travel and tourism, as well as identifying and networking the alternative responsible tourism resources in the world,which focuses on healing the planet, green travel and respect for local communities, conversation and cultural heritage. More information in : www.seata.info and www.PeacefulWorldTravel.org respectively.
Yaklom Hill Lodge and community development in Ratanakiri province
Nature for sale, culture for sale, human zoos, among others, are some concerns that have been thought about in countries that tourism (mass or sustainable) has reached a high state of development and achievement. It should be noted that tourism in Ratanakiri is still at the infant stage - tourism facilities, tourism human resources, awareness of local people (especially hill tribes), and so on, are all still at the preliminary development. Efforts by some organizations are being made to build capacity of local people so that they can deal with the growing tourism in Ratanakiri in a sustainable ways.
Even our operation is small, at Yaklom Hill Lodge we are aware that local people (as one important stakeholder of tourism in Ratanakiri) should get something out of this, rather than merely being seen or being visited (or being ambushed by a tourist group) but they get nothing in return. We think that at least local hill tribe villagers should be informed as to why the group of barang (meaning “foreigner” in Khmer) come to visit their village, their house, their farms, or take their photographs. Another question is should they get any direct benefit from being visited or being seen , or not at all.
In July and August 2008, Yaklom Hill Lodge launced the evening English language class at Yaklom Commune School for interested villagers in Yaklom commune. In cooperation with the UK based Ecoteer (www.ecoteer.com), Yaklom Hill Lodge partially sponsored this volunteer activity in order to benefit people in the community. This will enable those interested in English in term of their employment and income generation in tourism sector.
We know that we do not have a perfect solution. What we started with our 2 pilot villages (Phume Krala, and Phume Khmeng of Poy commune, O'chum district - about 20 km north of Ban Lung) is something humble. We had meeting with leaders committees and villagers of the 2 villages (both are of Kreung hill tribe) to discuss the matter of tourist visits to their village. We reached agreement that Yaklom Hill Lodge will contribute 1 kg of rice paddy per one guest who stays at our lodge and comes to visit any of these 2 villages in trip organized by us. This rice paddy will go to the village rice bank - a community development activities villagers initiated with assistance from one NGO (non-government organization). So far a number of kgs of rice paddy has been delivered to the 2 villages' rice banks. This can ensure that the benefit goes to community, not individual. We hope that, with meeting and dialogue with local people, we can expand this initiative to more villages, and organize more activities for (responsible) tourists as well (such as village/farm and jungle trekking, and village stay). Such activities can also provide some income for villagers who act as a village guide or who sell hill tribe handicraft on site.
Power in Yaklom Hill Lodge
As we are located outside the service area of public grid electricity, Yaklom Hill Lodge relies on 2 types of electricity power : alternate current or AC power (220 volt) from generator, and direct current or DC power (12 volt) supplied by solar system units. Even investment in solar system in Cambodia is considered very high, we are gradually moving from relying on generator (which is now only about 3 hours per day). We hope that we can rely mainly on solar power in the near future, and has generator only as back up.
Using power from solar system not only reduces operation cost in the long run, it also reduces emission of polluted gas by generator. It also has no noise problem. With the access to and assistance from the 2 organizations we have membership with, we will gradually introduce more solar-operated facilities in our lodge -such as solar water heater, solar garden lighting, and solar mosquito repellent.
People of Yaklom Hill Lodge
Our small team is staffed with persons of multi-ethnicity : Khmer, Lao, Tampuan, Kreung, and Lao Thai. Although each person is specifically assigned to her/his specialized task, it is common that you may see one person running around many things in our lodge. While specialization is good, we think that generalization (to some extent) is not a bad idea!