Mondulkiri is the Cambodia nobody expects: instead of rice paddies, palm trees and golden temples, you get green hills rolling to the horizon, pine forests, thundering waterfalls and a cool breeze that surprises anyone arriving from the heat of the lowlands. It's the country's largest and least populated province, a wild, remote territory in the far east, right up against Vietnam, where the landscape looks more like a mountain plateau than the classic tropical postcard. People come here to breathe in nature, walk through the jungle and discover a different Cambodia.
The human heart of Mondulkiri is the Bunong (or Phnong) people, the country's largest indigenous group, who have lived in these hills since long before the modern Cambodian state existed. The Bunong live in close connection with the forest and, traditionally, with elephants, and their culture, animist beliefs and way of life are an essential part of what makes this place unique. Getting to know their world, respectfully and through projects that benefit them, is one of the richest experiences in northeastern Cambodia.
Mondulkiri's big draw is its ethical elephant sanctuaries: projects that rescued these animals from work camps and riding tourism, where today you can see them and walk alongside them as they roam freely through the jungle, without riding them. Add to that the Bousra waterfalls, hiking, viewpoints and the calm of Sen Monorom. This guide helps you choose a responsible sanctuary, get around a province of difficult roads and make the most of one of Cambodia's most authentic and beautiful corners.
Long before Cambodia became a modern state, the hills of Mondulkiri were inhabited by the Bunong (Phnong) and other indigenous highland minorities, grouped under the name Khmer Loeu ('upper Khmer'), with an animist culture and an economy tied to the forest and to elephants. For centuries the region was a remote frontier, barely touched by the Khmer kingdoms of the lowlands. In the 20th century, its isolation and jungle made it a theatre of war: during the Vietnam War, northeastern Cambodia hosted bases of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and was a target of US bombing, and around 1970 it came under the control of the Khmer Rouge, who had established themselves early in the area. Only with peace, in the 21st century, did Mondulkiri begin to open up to nature and culture tourism, with the elephant sanctuaries and Bunong culture as its main attractions. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The highlands of the far northeast: hills, jungle and waterfalls, home to Cambodia's Indigenous peoples and far removed from the Khmer world of the plains.
Read the history of Northeast (mountains and jungle) →They depart from Da Lat, 136 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
To understand Mondulkiri, you have to start with its people, not with its kings or its borders. Long before Cambodia existed as a modern state, even long before Angkor, these rolling hills in the far east were home to the Bunong people (also called Phnong or Pnong), the largest of the indigenous groups of the Cambodian highlands. The Bunong are not Khmer: they belong to the group of minorities known collectively as Khmer Loeu, 'the upper Khmer', indigenous mountain peoples with their own languages, beliefs and ways of life.
Bunong culture is woven into the forest. Traditionally they practised shifting slash-and-burn farming, hunted, gathered and kept a deep spiritual bond with nature: their religion is animist, full of spirits that live in the trees, rivers, mountains and animals. The Bunong also had a very special relationship with elephants for centuries. They tamed them and used them for work and transport, treating them almost as members of the family. That old alliance between the Bunong and elephants is at the heart of today's Mondulkiri sanctuaries.
For generations this region was a remote frontier. The Khmer kingdoms of the lowlands controlled the rice fields and the cities but had little presence in these jungle hills, and barely touched them. The Bunong lived with relative autonomy, in a world apart, beyond the reach of central power. That remoteness shaped their history: it sheltered them for centuries, but in the 20th century it would also put them in the path of war.
While the heart of the Khmer kingdom flourished in the lowlands (first at Angkor, then at Phnom Penh and other capitals), the northeastern mountains, Mondulkiri among them, stayed on the margins of central power. They were frontier zones, hard to reach and covered in jungle, home to indigenous peoples who were not part of the Khmer world of rice fields and temples. At best, the Cambodian state held only a nominal, distant sovereignty over them.
That changed, at least on paper, when French colonialism arrived. Cambodia became a French protectorate in 1863 and was later absorbed into French Indochina. The European powers drew borders and maps that formally made these highlands part of Cambodian territory, marking them off from neighbouring Vietnam and, further north, Laos. But the colonial administration, like the Khmer rulers before it, barely touched the daily life of the Bunong. The region remained a remote periphery, valued more for its natural resources than for its people.
In fact, Mondulkiri as a modern administrative unit is fairly recent: the province as we know it took shape in the 20th century. Its name is usually translated as something like 'the meeting of the hills' or 'centre of the mountains'. Beyond maps and official names, though, the essentials stayed the same for a long time: a land of hills and forests where the Bunong went on living in their own way, far from the noise of the world. That world, however, was about to burst in with unprecedented violence.
The remoteness that had protected Mondulkiri for centuries turned into a curse in the 1960s and 1970s. The Vietnam War spilled across the borders, and Cambodia's remote northeast (jungle-covered, thinly populated and right up against Vietnam) became strategic ground. Vietnamese communist forces used the region as a rear base and a transit zone: during the war, Mondulkiri hosted bases of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong), which operated from the Cambodian side of the border.
The United States' response was devastating. Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, US aircraft carried out a massive and largely secret bombing campaign over eastern Cambodia, aimed at destroying those communist sanctuaries. The bombs fell on land inhabited by indigenous communities that had nothing to do with the big decisions of the war. The bombing and the fighting forced many villagers to flee their homes, hide in the forest and live in the open, in an area that grew ever more militarised and dangerous.
That chaos pushed people towards the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian communist guerrilla movement that had taken root early in the northeast and knew how to exploit the highland minorities' resentment of central power. By around 1970, Mondulkiri, like the rest of the northeast, had fallen under Khmer Rouge control. When they seized the whole country in 1975 and imposed their genocidal regime, the tragedy was complete. Like all Cambodians, the Bunong endured forced labour, uprooting and violence under a regime that destroyed cultures, traditions and lives until its fall in 1979.
With peace, over the last few decades, Mondulkiri began writing a different chapter. The province, still the largest and least populated in the country, slowly opened up to nature and culture tourism, very different from the temples of Angkor or the beaches of the south. Its green hills, its waterfalls (Bousra above all), its forests and, most of all, its Bunong heritage became the draw of an 'off the beaten track' destination, sought out by travellers who want to see another side of Cambodia.
The symbol of this new era is the ethical elephant sanctuaries. Reviving the old bond between the Bunong and these animals, several projects rescued elephants from labour camps and riding tourism to give them a decent life in the jungle. Today visitors walk alongside them instead of riding them. These sanctuaries do more than protect the elephants: they employ Bunong families, value their knowledge of the forest and help preserve both the wildlife and the indigenous culture, turning tourism into a conservation tool.
But Mondulkiri's future is not guaranteed. Deforestation, farming expansion (including large plantations), logging and pressure on indigenous land threaten both the forests, among the best preserved in Southeast Asia, and the Bunong way of life. The province also grows coffee and other crops on its cool hills. The region's future depends on a delicate balance between development, conservation and respect for indigenous peoples. For the traveller, Mondulkiri now offers something increasingly rare: the chance to meet magnificent nature and a living ancestral culture, and, if you choose well, to do it in a way that helps both survive.
