Too much monkey business

N 11 25.270 E 107 25.780 125m - Cat Tien, Vietnam - 9 November 2008

Ok, I'm really struggling to keep up with all of this. I went back and started writing about China, but haven't finished much yet. Then I also started about Vietnam but haven't gotten very far with that either. I might just make a list entry and a quick summary.

China we had come over from Mongolia to Beijing (Great Wall, Forbidden City, hutongs), to Pingyao (Raise the Red Lantern town and incredibly touristy, lots of touts with megaphones shouting at you, not my favorite city), to Luoyang (to see the Grottos - amazing cliffs filled with carved Buddhas), to Xi'an (terracotta warriors), to Chengdu (starting point for our bird tour of Sichuan which went to Moxi, Kangding, and Tagong), to Kunming, and finally to Yuanyang (super famous rice terraces), and out of China to the border at He Kou (the bus journey from hell, covered in vomit) and across to Lao Cai, Vietnam.

Then in Vietnam to Sapa (old French hill station) to Ta Phin (home stay with a Red Dao family), on to Hanoi (lots of scooters and yellow buildings and crazy bundles of power lines and mobile phone numbers spray painted everywhere), then to Hue (the old imperial center of Vietnam, the Citadel and scene of much fighting during the war), to Hoi An (the southern part of China Beach, yeah, great beach), then all the way to Saigon (ok, Ho Chi Minh City, even more scooters) and a bus journey to Cat Tien (which I'll try to write about).

We had a few choices for Cat Tien. There isn't much information in any guidebook about it, which seems surprising considering it is a fairly important national park in Vietnam. It has like 800% (ok, I can't remember the exact number) of all the animal and bird species in Vietnam in it. But all the books just give vague things about try taking this bus, tell them to let you off at this stop, and then try and find somebody on a motorbike to take you the rest of the way. Hmm, ok. Or you can go on an organized tour, treking, bird guides, transport there and back, blah blah blah. For only $150/person for two days. Hold on, let me catch my breath there. Vietnam is a little more expensive than the guidebooks are saying, but it still isn't crazy expensive like that. Maybe we will take our chances with the bus which costs a few dollars.

Well, it was an interesting bus ride, I'll say that. The guy running our hotel helped us with the arrangements. Well, actually helped, not just booked a tour like most hotels and charge a big commission. He got two buddies to take us on their motorcycles to the bus station (the north one, 5 km away from the city center), 50,000 each, which I guess is sort of reasonable. And the bus should get us to the town, and there should be motorcycles waiting, and he tried calling the park to see about accommodations, but nobody answered, so we will just take our chances.

We are up really early on Tuesday morning, we need to be packed, have breakfast done and be on the bikes by 7 am. They wake up a little early and make us eggs and baguettes for breaksfast and we finish up as the motorcycles arrive. We have a rather breathtaking, invigorating, or a ride that jolts us awake. Hanging on the back of a motorbike, he is weaving around traffic, tearing across bridges when he has a clear space in traffic, wheew, I'm happy to make it there intact. One of the guys comes in and helps us buy tickets, make sure we have the right ticket window then makes sure we find the bus we need to get on and waves us on our way, baby birds being chucked out of the nest.

Seems like an ok minibus, about 15 seats or so and only a few people there so far, a grandfather and granddaughter. The woman beside us has a huge bag of bread and two boxes full of clucking chicks which she puts under the seat and checks them every time we stop for something. After we get about 10 passengers, we set off. Ok, this seems promising. The ticket says Cat Tien, so it should get us at least close enough to find a ride to the park.

Ahh, minibuses, you always hope it won't happen but it always does. We slowly head north, I think we do. I don't know the way, but I assume we just didn't circle around in Saigon for 90 minutes looking for more passengers. Maybe we did. I have to hope that we did make some sort of forward progress during that time. We stop for about 20 minutes somewhere, the driver and the conductor disappear for a long time and eventually return with 3 new passengers in tow. We keep going, driving slowly, the conductor (don't know what else to call him, the guy who gets people in, collects money) keeps shouting out the window at anybody standing on the side of the road. Sometimes we stop and he jumps out and grabs people by the arm, getting them into the bus. I have to assume that they did want to go to Cat Tien, or in that general direction since even though they seem reluctant at times, they don't deck him, or try to run.

It starts getting crowded, we are up to like 20 passengers and all the seats are full and stools are put down in the little remaining floor space for more to sit. And he keeps shouting out the window and keeps finding more and more people. He yells at us to scoot over, hell no, there isn't any room already. Somehow a few more people crowd into our seat. At the peak, I counted, I think, 28 people in that van. People are standing, sitting on each other, just crazy.

It is then like an hour or so before we start getting nearer and a few people slowly start getting off. Somebody shouts, I assume it is 'stop now', and the door opens and they jump out and the van almost stops for this transaction. The lady gets off with her chickens and then there are only a few left on the van. One last lady gets off in Cat Tien village and it is just the two of us. We ask, here? No, further. Then we sight water and probably can't go any further than that.

We stop at a little roadside cafe (a shack) and get out. The driver and the conductor park and get out and lie down on hammocks. The cafe suggests it might be a few minutes before the ferry guy gets there and offers some food. The noodle soup is pretty cheap (instant cup of noodles with a few extra vegetables) so that will have to do, and a coconut to drink, and a few beers. (Vietnam beer has been nice, I should put together my list of different ones I've tried. I could give away the surprise though, LaRue has been the best.)

The ferry arrives, and so do three coach loads of school kids. They get the big ferry and we wait for the small one after that. We didn't take the bus we thought we were on, apparently this one goes right to the entrance. No motorbikes needed. We walk a few hundred meters and find the visitor center. They have room, a small bungalo (wooden house on stilts) for $20/night. Hmm, prices have gone up, but ok, about what we were paying in Saigon. It is a national park, hopefully the money goes for good things.

There is a small sort of village here. Walking down the main street, it looks like a small urban suburban town. There are little guest houses all along the road, set back with lawns in the front, lit by street lamps. There are two canteens where the food isn't great, one seems worse than the other. Sometimes the food was a little icky, sometimes it was fairly good. After a few meals of all meat things, we try to pick more from their limited vegetable selections which they mostly don't have in stock (I will miss morning glory when I leave Vietnam) leaving mostly fried cabbage or boiled cabbage.

The park is quite amazing. It is a variety of forests, from tropical rain forest to evergreen and semi-deciduous forests. Quite a lot of it was sprayed with defoliants during the war, so those sections are dominated by bamboo, which grows quickly. Sitting on the back porch of our shack, we look out over the river and chestnut headed bee-eaters sun themselves on the roof of the shack next door.

We set up two tours to see some birds. We meet a German couple and decide to share with them. They are reluctant at first, since they have set up the tour first with the guide, but since we have our own bird books and binoculars, they think maybe we won't be annoying and ruin it for them. Both days have a 6 am (!) start. We walk the first day and have a truck the second day, so we can go a little further in the park. The guide is this greying haired Vietnamese, speaks ok English, although the accent is confusing. He totally knows his birds, there are only a few warblers that he can't quite figure out but the rest are instant.

The first day, we walk a few miles, mostly up the main road, stopping every few feet to look at something in the trees on either side. Starting at 6 or so in the morning, it is pretty cool out and the birds seem pretty active then. We see tons of things, lots we have never seen before. By 10 or so, it starts getting much warmer and there isn't as much activity. We end up trying a jungle path about then, he want to show us pittas, tiny ground based birds, rare, hard to see, hopping on the ground. He sees one but none of the rest of us ever see one. Stupid pittas. I enjoyed the walk through the jungle though, and there were a few groups of gibbons moving in the trees overhead.

The second day, we have a truck and a driver and head down the same road. When he seems something, he bangs on the roof and we stop and look. We cover a lot more distance and have a nice walk on the far side of the park in a small farm on the river's edge. In between, we again go through the jungle looking for stupid pittas. This jungle is much denser and there are so many things, so many things hanging everywhere and sounds coming from all over. A really wild place. We don't see much on this walk (I see a small snake) except a camera crew who won't go past us, they want to take footage of us and make lots of noise for a while so that we are guaranteed to not see anything. Grrr. I didn't sign a wavier, but I suppose they don't care so much about things like that here.

In the afternoons, we nap and sit on the porch watching our backyard, or rent bikes and ride looking for hornbills and peafowl. We are a bit disappointed on those, we see neither but we see other things that are just as nice.

Maybe the funniest animal highlight was in the cafe. They have a patio that looks out over the river with lots of trees just beyond the patio that usually have a few monkeys in them, long tailed something or other, somebody said. Most of them sit in the bamboo eating stuff there and minding their own business, but for a few of them, the lure of scraps on tables and especially a tree with some ripe jack fruit (?) which they sneak up and try to rip pieces out of, alternating between being absorbed in that (upside down, face buried deep in the fruit) and looking guilty with an eye out for the waitress who wields a broom and a stick and chases them off. More entertaining to watch then the tv set on the other side of the cafe, mostly showing badly dubbed films (no sounds except for dialog narration) or loud sports.

So, a nice three days in the park. It is good to be away from crazy big cities and it is nice to just have settled somewhere for a few days. It would be nicer to stay a little longer, to see more and not have to move again for a while, but maybe we can plan to stay somewhere for a week or more maybe in Thailand. Excellent. So, back to Saigon and then quickly on to Cambodia, probably taking a three day cruise of the Mekong and then across to Phnom Penh. Some boring lists to round things out:

Cat Tien animals - 10 December 2008
yellow cheeked gibbons
long tailed something (monkey)
samber deer
barking deer
loads of geckos

11 December 2008
Tortoise
boar and three babies
small black and white snake

Cat Tien birds - 10 December 2008
chestnut headed bee-eater (probably my favorite)
Black drongo
Vinous-breasted starling
striped throated bulbul
black crested bulbul
ratchet tailed treepie
black naped oriole
black winged cuckoo shrike
common tailorbird
common flamebacked woodpecker
Swinhoe's minivet
Asian fairy bluebird
Asian brown flycatcher
common iora
red breasted parakeet
scarlet backed flowerpecker
spangled drongo
two barred warbler (as well as some unidentified warblers)
besra
ashy drongo
olive backed sunbird
vernal hanging parrot
crimson sunbird
ruby cheeked sunbird
needle tailed woodswallow
blue winged leafbird
copper throated sunbird
purple sunbird
white rumped shuma
green billed malkoha
bar winged flycatcher shrike
orange brested trogon
black and red broadbill
Malayan night heron
pale blue flycatcher
large tailed nightjar
oriental dwarf kingfisher

11 December 2008
Green imperial pigeon
black naped oriole
grey wagtail
red junglefowl
stork (oriental, black ?)
shikra
red headed drongo
Saimese fireback
Oriental pied hornbill
Indian roller
chestnut headed beeeater
white throated kingfisher
vinous breasted starling
golden fronted leafbird
common iora
little spiderhunter
puff throated babbler
white rumpted munia
red collared dove
chinese pond heron
common kingfisher
greater coucal
pied kingfisher
scaly breasted munia
either a black eagle or black kite - guide wasn't completely sure

Maybe white crested laughing thrush
Maybe crested myrna and hill myrna
(No bird guide for these, best guesses.)

12 December 2008
a stork (I think, need to find a Vietnam bird book, it was circling like a vulture which seems strange)
some sort of falcon (need to look up also)