Exotic Animals Everywhere!

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Greeting Fellow Gods of Rock,

Well having successfully returned from the darkest corners of the Mekong Delta and after surviving repeated attempts on my life by the Comrades in the Politburo for showing the locals my awesome rocking power, it was nice to be back in Saigon, if only for the night...no one could have predicted the terrifying chain of events that were about to unfold. Deep in the jungles of South Central Vietnam, without food or water and unbeknownst to us we were cast together with two violently dangerous Swiss. Ueli, the interior designer who liked to torture small animals and pieces of fruit and an evil Biologist intent on finding an insect with the most venomous poison in the world that would help her carry out her evil plans of world domination....Dominator by name, DOMINATING by nature.....

Our newly found Swiss friends had completed a very small amount of research into a trip to the Nam Cat Tien National Park in Dong Nai province about 3-4 hours North West of Saigon. They only had three days in Saigon before they had to head South to Phu Quoc Island for a spot of R&R and some down time to work on their new puppet show: 'Johan and Helga's adventures in a Snowy Chocolate Wonderland'. A culturally creative people the Swiss are. They suggested that it would be GREAT if we came along because they had never met such interesting, funny, intelligent, sexy times people as us. How could we refuse? So we set about finding a tour company that could take us there.

Apparently it wasn't a very popular or common destination for people to visit because the various tour companies around the place never really advertised it and they all had to look it up in their little books to tell us the activities and the cost. Most of them were about the same price so we toddled off to our known and trusted tour company Innoviet to find out their take on the trek into the unknown. They knew about as much as the others! It was pretty expensive in comparison to other tours to other places, namely because you have to hire a private car and driver. But we thought that it would be a great experience and as long as we could have the irrepressible Em Yen as the company guide then we would agree to take the tour. Our wish was granted and we were to assemble outside of our hotel at 7.30am the following morning for the four hour trip to the park.

We awoke early and I had a simple breakfast of water and uncooked rice, meanwhile Sarah had her usual breakfast of 62 different varieties of fruit, followed by 10 different juices and her obligatory twigs and bark. We walked outside and met The Alte Hase and The Dominator and waited for Yen to turn up. Five minutes went past and Ueli was going spare, he tore off his shirt, brandished a massive Swiss Army Knife and started slashing the tyres of the motorbikes scattered in the Hem-Way screaming "Don't these people have watches? This wouldn't happen in Switzerland!" Sarah landed a flying head-butt square on his delicate features which rendered him in-operable for 30 seconds; enough time for the Dominator to calm him down. Just then a representative of Innoviet (Em Tram) appeared and took us to our car. We all looked at each other thinking we had been duped into taking the tour and not having Em Yen as our guide....We hopped into the car ashen faced and thinking that we had been lied to. We drove around the block and parked outside the Innoveit HQ, whereupon little Yen came running out and opened the door and asked "Is there a tour to Nam Cat Tien here?" We all laughed, they played a trick on us the delicious little things...

So with our faith restored in humanity, and Ueli gagged and tied to the back seat, we set off on our adventure to Cat Tien. The journey was full of laughter and hi-jinks with the Dominator setting fire to the drivers hair as some sort of Swiss joke....Once we left the massive sprawl of Saigon the country side smoothed out into a vista of poor towns, rivers and rubber plantations all nestled in red dirt. The country seemed different from that in the Mekong, the humid sticky air was replaced with a humid sticky air that was a little cleaner and a touch cooler. We got our first glimpse of mountain ranges and monuments to war dead. It was strange. But still there was poverty, and still there were smiles. Traveling through this area one got the sense of war, there were no visible markings of the war, yet this is the Vietnam that we see on movies, rice paddies, mountain ranges and jungle, the lot. This landscape was the Vietnam that had been implanted into our brains through various movies and documentaries.

And so to a dirt road we came that lead to a couple of tin shacks on the bank of a medium sized river. Here was where we crossed into the park. It was full of relatively new and nice looking buildings and a fair few military types wandering around the place. It was then that Yen informed us that it was totally government owned and run. We checked in and made our way to our bungalows, which were comfortable. The thing that struck us the most was the complete silence of the place, the silence here provided a respite for our senses after the constant noise and bustle of Saigon

We had enough time to have lunch before our first trek into the Jungle. We headed for the chow house to find that it was extremely expensive by comparison to anywhere else in Vietnam and the food was pretty average. We ate up and headed off to meet the National Park guide. This guy seemed really bright, he picked mine and Sarah's accent and picked Dom and Ueli for Germans. Vietnamese have great trouble picking accents but not this dude. His English was impeccable and his mannerisms made him seem as if he had lived in the west for a long time, he was slick and it showed. He rubbed Sarah the wrong way and she was convinced from the start the he was some kind of Communist spy trying to find out the plans to Australias missle defence system which she had just finished designing.

Cat Tien is the biggest national park in Vietnam and has been set aside to preserve the fast disappearing flora and fauna of this amazing country. I think due testament should be paid to the government for doing this, so often in one party countries the environment runs way down the list, and it does here as well, but at least they are making a start. One of the main goals of the park is to stop poachers, taking tigers, bears, snakes and birds from the park and selling their various body parts on the Vietnamese/Chinese traditional medicine market. As such they have teams of rangers (former poachers who belong to minority tribes throughout the area) who trek through the jungle and hunt the poachers down. At the park headquarters there are a collection of Asian bears that were taken from poachers. The poachers catch them, keep them in captivity and siphon the bile from their stomachs and sell it as a male sex drive enhancer. It is a good thing that the bears are retrieved from the poachers, but the dudes at the park keep them in tiny little cages, it's pretty bad stuff. Following this we headed off into the jungle to check the bio-diversity happening there. It is an eerie place to be. 3 metres in and you can't see where you came from. It's dark, sticky and thick; in most places you can't see 3 metres in front of you, in others you can't see a metre in front of you. I'm glad I never had to fight a war in it. Aside from its creepiness it was filled with beautiful tropic plants and trees; a chorus of wonderful and exotic birds, giant butterflies and all manner of insects. The Dominator being a biologist nearly wet her pants. The guide was mouthing off about how spiders were insects and she nailed him on it. She Dominated.....But that was about it, the trek that was supposed to last 4 hours only lasted an hour and a half. the Dominator was ready to kill, she nearly took the handcuffs and duct tape off Ueli and let him loose on the guide, but we convinced her it was a bad idea. Still we consoled ourselves with the fact that we had the 2 hour spotlighting trip to go on tonight in the hope that we might catch a glimpse of the Javan Rhinoceros.

So after a crappy dinner we took off to watch a documentary about the park and the animals in it. Watching that video was like having a molten dagger thrust through your heart. It revealed that the Javan Rhinoceros that we were told we had a good chance of seeing had only been seen once in the last 13 years and they believed that there were only maybe 5 or 6 left in the whole park. Again we relieved our pain with the thought of the two hour spotlighting trip that we were only minutes away from taking. The 4wd rolled up and the four of us jumped in the back with a Russian couple who were along for the ride as well. Heading out towards the jungle the truck stopped and the female guide in the open back with us shone the spotlight on a rock and happily pronounced 'look, a rabbit', was she farked in the head or what? It was a stone straight up. She banged the roof and the driver took off down the road flat biscuit, any animals that may have been there would have been scared off by the noise of the clapped out piece of poo we were driving in. And on down the road we went, hardly slowing at all, we did see 4 deer, but that was it. We got down the road a bit and the guide and driver decided that they had had enough and we made our way back to HQ. The two hour animal watching tour turned into a 40 minute cross country cartwheel that was very disappointing. The Dominator was inconsolable and Ueli, well the less said about his built up rage the better....The guide that took us for the trek during the afternoon came over and asked us what we saw, we told him nothing, he apologised. He then looked at Ueli and me and asked what we were doing now, we told him nothing he then said (in front of Saartje and The Domitron) "Why don't you put your wives to bed and come and get a massage from our girls with me." He was dead serious, Saartje and The 'Nator nearly floored him. This place doubled as a whore house for politburo hacks; this was confirmed when Saartje, Dom and Ueli walked past the 'massage' place and saw naked women inside. Crazy shite. We trudged off to bed disappointed to say the least.

We were up the next morning at around 6am, we had breakfast and checked out some monkeys that had entered the compound looking for food. After this we selected bicycles for a 10km ride into the jungle and then a 5km walk to Bau Sau lake (crocodile lake) to see, funnily enough, some crocodiles. The ride was really, really pretty and peaceful. We saw a heap of monkeys fighting in the trees off to one side and others running across the road behind us to join in the fun. They sounded like wild dogs, but scarier. It was well fine. We ride the 10ks get off our bikes and start walking through the jungle to the lake. The walk was really good, not taxing at all, but disappointingly devoid of anymore wild life, after seeing the monkeys we thought we were going to be in for a real treat. We walked through thick canopy jungle (insert obligatory Walter Sobchak quote here), thinning deciduous jungle and finally very thick bamboo jungle. The final few hundred metres to Bau Sau took us over small hill dotted by rocky paths that opened up to the beautiful oasis that was the lake. It was so peaceful and serene. The lake surrounded on all sides by gently sloping mountain ranges was a picture of utter peace and beauty as a gentle cool breeze blew in from its still waters. This was just about perfect after a hot sweaty trek through the jungle. After we had had a rest, some food and refreshments we asked the obvious question: "So where are the crocodiles?" The park guide looked away and said "No crocodiles, too late for them, you have to be here early in the morning". We were lost for words, but it was turning out to be one of those trips and I guess we kind of just laughed it off even though we were disappointed big time. I mean they just can't say no sometimes, it has everything to do with saving face, so they just can't say no!

We organised ourselves and made our way back through the jungle to where we left the bikes. We had a breather and then jumped up to hop on the bikes and head home only to find that we were one bike short. Someone had nabbed a bike! We spread out and looked around for it in the jungle but it was gone, someone had lifted it. It was the park guides bike as well, but that didn't stop him quietly muttering something about us having to pay 'compensation' for the stolen bike! What a load of steamy number two's. We pedalled the 10ks back to HQ with the unfortunate Em Yen having to be doubled by the slimy guide. We get back to HQ and the till bitches in the office are telling us that we have to pay about $250 for the guides missing bike. Well Saartje arced up and told them where to go. So there was a stand off while the Innoviet boss tried to contact the Park boss to sort this out. There was just a palpable feeling of something dodgy in the air. I firmly believe that the guide had organised another guide to take the bike in order to clip us for a couple of hundred bucks, you could just sense it. I went in and asked for all our passports back, but they refused to give them to us until we paid for the bike. Now we were all getting angry, holding our passports was a really crappy thing to do. We couldn't leave without them. There was some arguing, Ueli went berserk again with the Swiss army knife, Sarah was doing Ninja Cartwheels to scare the military types, the Dominator gulped at length from a bottle of Vodka, and I brought the situation to a close with the use of the Jedi mind trick; either that or Em Yen had resolved it using rational and threat based arguments.....more than likely the former. The force is strong with me. By the time we got things sorted we were about 2 and a bit hours late. Our driver was waiting on the other side of the river and we all thought he was going to split. We made our way to the boat and scowled at all and sundry. Once across the river we found that our driver had not left and was waiting with a smile. We jumped in the car and headed back to Saigon along darkened country roads happy to be out of Cat Tien. It's a shame because the park is really a beautiful place, it is just run by a corrupt bunch of people.

We arrived back in Saigon and we all headed out for dinner to have laugh about the whole sorry excursion. The Alte Hase and The Dominatrix were heading off to Phu Quoc the next day and convinced us that we should try and get a flight down there and hang out with them for the next 7 days. After that trip we needed some R&R and besides it couldn't get any worse could it.........?

Blustery Winds over the Gulf of Thailand causing a lot of aggravation and regulation pot-hole type travel.

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Photos

Dong Nai River
The sprawling and beautiful Dong Nai River

A tribute to the dead.
A massive statue that is on top of a hill that looks over the Dong Nai river, the site of a fierce battle during the war.

Cramped Conditions
Two of the bears that have been taken from poachers who now live in severely cramped conditions.

The little pocket rocket Em Yen
Two towering specimens of Aussie goodnes and one tiny little Vietnamese. Note the leech protectors on our legs. I didn't want mine but was made to wear them otherwise the chicks would fawn over my sexy times legs.

Dom, Jaso, Saartje and Ueli
Taken just after the Dominator took the cuffs and gag off Ueli.

Monkey!
One of Sarah's very close relatives. She communicated with the Monkey on its level. She's super smart.

Canopy jungle
The jungle is a strange place, so thick and dark it is sometimes well scary. If you didn't keep up you could get lost.

Bau Sau
This is the view that greeted us after walking through the steaming jungle. It was absolutely beautiful. But no crocodiles!

Comments

[carmo]

ripped off
at the least the knock-shop would have had a happy ending

[Jaso]

Carmo
Carmo! Dead set, except Saarje probably would have fed me to the monkeys!