I hiked Cambodia’s highest mountain and stumbled across a plane crash

My guide said to me: There is something special we want to show you.’ (Picture: Supplied)

While millions of visitors head to Cambodia each year for the temples of Angkor Wat, thanks to my odd obsession for climbing the highest mountains in every country I visit, I found myself hiking through dense jungle instead.

Having hired a local guide from a nearby village, we’d set off into thick rainforest where there were no crowds, no souvenir stalls and barely another person in sight.

We were in search of the country’s highest peak, Mount Aural, a little-known summit rising more than 1,800 metres above sea level in the remote Cardamom Mountains.

For hours we followed little more than a faint trail winding through humid jungle, broken only by small metal altitude markers nailed to trees. My guide, Pu Makara, sp...