At Last, Back into the Jungle!

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After breakfast I got a Grab to go to the bus station to get the bus to Cat Tien National Park. Getting a Grab to the bus station is really just laziness since a bus station is obviously a very easy place to get to by bus, but it's cheap and easy so for less than £2...

Getting a taxi directly to the national park apparently would literally cost millions. That's literally in the correct sense because it's about 2 million, or £67, which is far too much obviously to spend unnecessarily. Alternatively, from Mien Dong Bus Station, the bus costs 78K to Cat Tien National Park, which is understood by locals as Nam Cat Tien. Getting the bus was much simpler than it first seemed when I came up to a ginormous bus hub with hundreds of buses because I asked at the information counter for 'Nam Cat Tien' and was directed to the ticket counter and then directed to the bus.

The information I had read online said there were three buses a day, the first at 9:30. I was going for this bus, but left extra early to be sure because you never know with these things. 9:30 was correct though, and it's good I left early because traffic through HCMC was pretty bad. That's were Grab comes in way cheaper than taxis (or Uber) because Grab is based only on distance, not time, and the price is given exact up front. I got to the station about 50 minutes early though and was on the bus with plenty of time.

I had understood from the internet that it was a junk little minibus to Cat Tien but it was not, instead it was a proper comfy coach with air con and curtains and luggage storage below and WiFi on board. You can generally tell how up market bus service is in Asia by how highly ornamented the curtains are. Free bottles of water and antibacterial wipes were given to each passenger which I thought was unusual.

At one point on the drive we had a close run-in with a container lorry. This didn't seem any worse than all the other constant close run-ins to me but it was obviously a bigger deal because all the locals gasped. The bus driver and lorry driver then had an extended shouting match while we both stopped in the middle of the road before we continued on. I don't think anyone was actually hit though.

It was a very full bus indeed, although it started from the station quite empty and picked people up on the way. In fact, many people had to sit on plastic stools in the aisle. The extent of the bus journey that was urban really surprised me, HCMC sprawls a long way into the countryside. And even once out, it was very built up along the roads with less agricultural land than I would have expected. I don't think I saw any birds at all on the journey.

The ride took a little over four hours, and the bus conductor asked what hotel myself and the other two tourists were staying at and dropped us off right there. Easy. The national park is on the other side of a river from the town in a very similar way to Taman Negara. There is lots of accomodation and touristy things in the other side of the river, but I'm spending a bit more for the far superior experience of staying across the river inside the national park itself.

I got a little canoe thing across and was immidiately greeted by a tree filled with Velvet-fronted Nuthatches above the boat! Yay, birds! A good start! I'm spending 6 nights at Cat Tien, of which I've decided to stay 1 night (the 24th) at Crocodile Lake which is a separate site in the national park and the rest of the time at the park headquarters. At the park HQ I'm staying at accommodation that is far nicer than I probably need - I've got a double room with air con and an en suite bathroom and even some little chairs. Not that I'll be spending much time in the room though, although having a kettle will be handy for making crack-of-dawn tea. Other people have said there is cheaper accommodation in a less nice room, but for reasons I'm not 100% sure of this wasn't possible for me. I'm not sure if it's full or they don't rent that out anymore. Anyway, the room I'm at is 350K per night -10% for low season and my total accommodation for six nights including crocodile lake and the 'Crocodile Lake fee' was 1.9 million which could be much worse.

Once I got into my room, the first thing I did was go for lunch. There are two restaurants inside the park itself so it's all very convenient and I'm really looking forward to just being a rainforest for a while. I'm expecting lots of rain and lots of leeches though! It was raining for much of the bus ride and a brief thunderstorm while I had lunch and I had already been warned about the leeches by multiple people and tried to be sold 'leech medicine' before I set foot in the park. You can really tell it's the rainy season based on, well, the rain, as well as the leeches, and very full rivers. At one point I came up to a ford which I simply could not cross.

Bird-wise however, I'm finding it quite birdy in general. The level of birdiness isn't reflected very well by the 'new species' list because most of the birds are the same as in Malaysia, but there's Bulbuls and kingfishers and drongos and such quite conspicuously I wouldn't say it was much less birdy than, say, Taman Negara, and there's a very active and obvious pair of nesting Black-and-red Broadbills around the HQ. I also saw a pair of Banded Broadbills which was only my second ever time seeing the species and thus was a far better view with my first pictures. The forest does seem quieter though, and I think the numbers of birds are far lower.

As I was walking along birding, a park ranger stopped and asked if I was looking for birds. I said I was, and he said he was also looking for birds so he walked along with me for a couple of hours pointing out various birds. I was half expecting him to decide that he had given me a tour and to charge me for it, but obviously I'm to cynical as he genuinely just wanted to show me birds and after a couple of hours said he had to go somewhere else and left. He also told me various reasons why different wildlife was threatened which was pretty much a list of what locals believe each species does when eaten. For example Lesser Coucals apparently, it's believed know what plants are medicinal and provide these for their chicks. So people look for lesser coucal nests and when they find chicks they break their limbs and leave them there because the parents will bring medicinal plants to the chicks. Then, a few days later, people take the chicks which they broke the limbs of and pickle them in rice wine which then takes up the medical benefits. These sorts of beliefs are so ubiquitous and the growing middle class of Vietnamese is fueling this huge demand for wildlife.

The mammal front was much more difficult. In the day, I got an extremely fleeting glimpse of a Long-tailed Macaques and an equally fleeting glimpse of a striped squirrel although I believe two species occur here so I have no idea which. The mammals at Cat Tien are notoriously difficult to find because of the immense poaching pressure on the park for bush meat. Obviously the endemic primates here are the top priority, though they are notoriously tough to find and notoriously fleeting when you do see them.

At night, I did some spotlighting of course for several hours before and after dinner with pygmy slow loris being the top target. Sunset (and sunrise, though I'll probably complain about that tomorrow) are very early in Vietnam and it was pitch black by 6:30. At dusk two very impressive Great Eared Nightjars hunting right near me was the first highlight and before too, too long I found an Indian Giant Flying Squirrel. And the other before-dinner mammal sighting was a Common Palm Civet, seen quite well although I was clearly very wary. Unfortunately, when I was about 20 minutes from the restaurant it started absolutely bucketing it down and I got totally soaked. Oh well.

Once I had eaten, removed quite a few leaches, and waited for the rain to die down to just a drizzle, I continued on with the spotlighting. I got soaked a couple more times although the rain seems to be really have for brief periods and then reduce to light drizzle or stop completely. But there's not really anywhere to shelter when it does rain so you just have to walk through it. I spent a lot of hours looking for slow loris in forest that looked very promising and lorisy (far too many hours given my intention to get up at 5AM tomorrow) but there was, unfortunately, no sign of lorises tonight. I've got more nights though and feel like I've got some chance. Pygmy Slow Loris, Black-shanked Douc, Yellow-cheeked Gibbon, and Annamese Silvered Langurs are the top mammal targets. The top birds are mostly ground birds which are notoriously difficult in general. But it's a nice forest, a great place to relax back in proper rainforest, and with six nights I hope I've given myself enough of a chance.

Seeing forest under such poaching pressure is sad though. There's so much unique wildlife in Vietnam and, more than anywhere else I've been, it's so precariously on the edge. Hopefully I do see some of it on this trip, although an extended 'last chance to see' tour of Vietnam is probably in order.

(There are a few lifers to add, but I'm too tired to go through it now. Some IDs need checking too)

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