I found it actually slightly too cold at night last night which I hadn't really expected. Dalat is at 1500m above sea level though, so a fairly high altitude. Only about 100m lower than the HQ at Mount Kinabalu although Dalat feels much lower, probably because it's on a Plateau with various peaks, which get above 2000m, dotted around. It was one of those peaks that I wanted to visit today, Mount Lang Biang, which is the main birding site near Dalat and the plan was always two or even three full days here out of the four that I've got. I didn't quite manage to get out as early as I would have done, partly because I was distracted by a Brexit debate over messenger for 20 minutes, but mainly because when I got downstairs ... read more

I eventually managed to drag myself out of bed early enough in the morning on not enough sleep, it being after midnight by the time I got to sleep. At least I had found the loris though! It would be annoying if I had no sleep and no loris! Today was my last day at Cat Tien, I leave early tomorrow morning for Dalat since there's one bus per day which leaves at 6:30. My Cat Tien targets that I'm yet to see are pittas and partridges (which is entirely unsurprising) so I decided to focus primarily on the trails today as well as a bit of the Crocodile Lake road. I started with the trails behind the captive animal area. I don't think I've mentioned that yet, but there are a few cages with some ... read more

(The title is tongue in cheek in case it’s not obvious enough – I’m not quite full of myself enough to unironically refer to myself as legendary) The lake was very cool first thing in the morning, it was shrouded in low mist with mist coming up from from the forest as well, and there were gibbons calling from the far bank. One of the rangers asked if I would like to go on a boat ride on the lake for an hour for 150k which sounded like a good idea. They don't use motorboats on the lake but instead have little plastic boats propelled by a paddle and we cruised around a bit along the lake edge as well as into the flooded forest area. It was nice to get a different perspective on the ... read more

Although a 5AM alarm is usually unpleasant, soon after I woke up I could hear gibbons calling from outside which got me up more quickly to go and investigate. It didn't take too long before I located the gibbons and there were two wild gibbons in the trees above some enclosures where captive gibbons - presumably rescued of similar - are kept. The wild gibbons in the trees were calling to the captive gibbons and it was a reasonably good and prolonged view of them. Gibbons calling in the rainforest, especially early in a cool misty morning, is always quite haunting, but I think these Buff-cheeked Gibbons sound more haunting than most with their call, it's really impressive. Gibbons are really awesome. Although they were attracted closer to the HQ by the captive gibbons, these ones ... read more

Once I had gone out to find breakfast I called a Grab to go to the zoo. A GrabCar that is, not a bike. I felt that not dying was worth the 57p extra cost. There's probably a way to get there by bus, but the Grab was less than £1.10 and it didn't feel worth the effort which isn't the best example for budget travel and you could spend a long time in Vietnam for incredibly cheaply but since I'm only here for two weeks, I'm going to strike a balance. On that breakfast note though, I would like to make the observation that Vietnam knows how to do bread! Seemingly no where else in Asia does good bread, sure Malaysia has slightly odd but perfectly good potato buns, but Vietnam has actual French baguettes! ... read more