Samkos is the second highest mountain in Cambodia, sitting at the elevation of 1751 meters from sea level. Despite its status as second highest mountain, I found it more challenging to trek and summited this mountain than Phnom Aoral, Cambodia’s highest peak. The main reason making Samkos is more challenging mountain to scale is the fact that not many people try summiting it, therefore most of the trail left untouched at its origin. Unlike Phnom Aoral, there’s no built camp area and there’s no water source. You need to either carry the water up with you or try to find water source by yourself, which leave it up to your luck to find one. One more challenge is that there is still illegal logging activity at Samkos, making it quite risky to face those people. Along the trail, you may find some huge trees and beautiful flora. We saw scratches on trees made by bears, too. The park ranger who made the trip with us said there’s still presence of elephant in this area but we didn’t encounter them during our time there. The best advice to successfully reach the summit is to have villagers who summited before go with you. I’ve heard of people making attempts but failed to sum