There's a remote part of an almost forgotten land where travel is always extreme. Each small leg of a journey becomes a voyage; in wet season the roads are thick sludge, in dry season (when I visited) they are a thick orange carpet of fine choking dust that kicks up into clouds and is entirely unavoidable. The ridges and ruts in the roads could competently dismantle even the most rugged Land Rover over time. Although somehow - and against all logic - the local combi minibuses seem to have found a survival niche. Maybe they were all constructed back in the day when things were built to last, maybe they get repaired every week. The omnipresent dust particles don't choke them to death, instead they shroud them in a layer of orange paintwork. You needn't ask about the comfort on these journeys - Ratanakiri is the land of the broken backside.

The humble motorcycle has risen to prominence here and is the preferred mode of transport for locals and tourists alike. Two wheels bump less than four must be the logic. Needless to say, only skilled riders should even attempt to ride the grooves, climb the hills and stay the course. It's impossible to see where anything is when on the 'major' roads because the dust thrown up by passing vehicles takes aeons to settle. It's akin to driving in a mild haar at best and ploughing through carrot and coriander soup the rest of the time. Cleanliness is far removed from anyone's vocabulary, even the imperative shower after a day's riding only dislodges about half of what is picked up. Ratanakiri is the land of the perma-tanned tourist.

Riding off-road is exhilarating, but it's impossible without a local driver. Riding two to a bike - tourist on the back - impossible things are done. Speeds I would never have the nerve to throttle to are clearly the norm. The path through complex furrows and ridges are either well-known or, more likely, intuitively mapped onto the driver's brain a second or two before the bike careers over the same path. A lifetime of driving these roads must do that to you. The inclines and descents are frighteningly steep, tightening my grip on the 'sissy bars' as I duck for cover too late for another cashew-nut tree branch to whack the top of my helmet. I can’t see any mountains here, just low rolling hills; a gently undulating countryside, which means views from the bike are ever-changing, every dip and rise revealing a new aspect. It is criss-crossed by tracks and mud roads, occasionally we have to swerve to avoid locals going about their business on motorbikes. Ratanakiri is the land of jungle waterfalls, cashew nuts and gems.

We fly past wooden ramshackle houses, plantations, scruffy kids and patches of jungle, then come to a stop in a rough little village. All the houses are made from the same type of wood and all are on stilts. Usually this indicates an area which floods often, but sometimes its just to keep the house cooler in the hot season, which is now. After buying a chilled juice, I am led through the banana trees and houses to an open area set aside for small-scale mining. Many wooden trusses squat above tiny diameter holes; ropes hang down into the deep dark pits barely large enough for a man to fit down; blue tarpaulin is perfunctorily pitched over water holes, providing shade for the dark-skinned men sloshing around orange-brown sludge in huge pans. This is a dangerous occupation, collapses have happened before. Even though the men dream of the big find, they would settle for being able to feed their families for another month. As I look at the black obsidian rocks in a miner’s hand an idea comes to my mind, that Ratanakiri is a land of hope.

But it was not always that way. For many dark years Ratanakiri, in the far north-east of the country (and the rest of Cambodia) was so consumed in horror that to have a hope was to risk your life. Survival at its most basic level required full concentration. The maniacal, self-consuming regime that dictated everything to everybody was so incredibly rotten that absolutely no-one was sure where to look or run, or who to turn to. It crippled the country. In the fullness of time, these things will become less of the story about such a beautiful land; maybe no allusion should be made to the past here; but I find, as I shake the one remaining hand of my guide's father (the other one was chopped off during the Khmer Rouge reign) that that time is not now. Not yet. They are handling it better than me it seems, even now I feel the grief from what I have learned. Ratanakiri deserves better, it always did.

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