Outside of Ho Chi Minh is Cat Tien National Park. I had only heard about it from reading my Lonely Planet guidebook. It is home to some small populations of the endangered javan rhinocerous, gibbons, langurs and other monkeys. I really wanted to explore this natural area since most of my time in Vietnam had been spent in cities. My favorite thing is discovering the ecology of new places.
I made a friend on the Ha Long bay tour I took around Christmas time, Octavio. He was also interested in hiking around the park. After about 2 weeks we met up in Ho Chi Minh and caught a bus to Cat Tien. The bus ride was interesting. There is no actual stop, they drop you on the side of the road in a random town. Thankfully there was transport waiting to bring us to the park. After a 25 km ride and a short river crossing, we were in the park.
The first activity was a boat ride to Go Tien, a rescue santuary for gibbons and langurs. The animals had been saved from being eaten, sold as pets or used in traditional medicine. For example, langur bones are ground and given to pregnant women as a calcium supplement. I think there are less destructive ways to get your calcium.
The highlight of the rescue center were the golden cheeked gibbons. When they are born they are all blonde and slowly darken to black. They stay black for several years. When females reach puberty they change back to blonde. They have a great call that almost sounds like whale song echoing through the woods. The ultimate goal of the sanctuary is to introduce the gibbons and langurs back into the wild and it has been very successul over the years.
That afternoon we rented bikes and went exploring. The jungle along the sides of the path were green and really beatiful. There were some fantastic twisty vines strung across the road.
A few times we jumped of our bikes and I showed Octavio all about the joys of flipping rocks in streams. The streams had some of the usual aquatic invertebrates: mayfies and caddisflies. I also had him hold his first millipede. As I plucked it from the ground and went to place it in his hand he backed up and said, "No, it is too much for me." which I thought was pretty funny. I persuaded him by saying that it would not bite and he relented. That was the ice breaker. From then on he wanted to touch everything.
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However, there were lots of other cool creatures around. There was this insect, I think it mght have been some kind of hemipteran, that disguised itself with particles from its surroundings. If anyone knows what it, please let me know.
The highlight of my evening were the uropygids, or vinegaroons. I was checking out a flower bed and saw an ovipositer sticking out from under a leaf. Thinking it was a cricket, I grapped it, then immediately dropped it. It took my confused brain a few seconds to process what the bizarre creature was. By the time I idenified it, it was gone. I was heartbroken at first, as I had never seen one in real life. However, they were everywhere. We found a pair mating and named them Jesus and Maria. I though the spanish names appropriate with Octavio being Chilean. The male presents the female with a sperm sac and you could see his long front appendages locked underneath her.
Vinegaroons get their names because they have glands under their abdomens that secrete acetic acid, so they smell like vinegar. When the pair separated we scooped up the male in a bottle to take a closer look and he was definitely secreting some type of smelly defensive fluid. After mating, females head back to their burrows and lay their eggs, which they protect. When they hatch the young ride on her back, eventually molting then leaving the nest. Afterwards the female dies. It takes 3 years to become sexually mature and they can live another four years after that. So cool.
That evening I had my first leech encounter. Those things sure do move fast! I had them all over my feet and even on my wrists. Absolutely disgusting fat little things. When Octavio saw them all over me he made me check him and we was covered as well. He freaked out a little bit as I pulled them off, keeping his eyes closed and muttering to himself in spanish, hahaha.
The next morning we had a private guided tour of the forest. Before leaving we coated our shoes in a gel that keeps leeches away, awesome. The guide, Jin, was really knowledgable and spoke fantastic english. He knew all the latin names for all the plants and knew enough to explain some of the biology. There were some goregous trees. One grew outwards by dropping off pieces of bark.
Some trees were huge, about 500 years old. One was even 700! They were amazing.
We were really lucky because we saw langurs and macaques jumping through the trees and running along the ground. It was mid morning, so it should have been a little late for them to be so active. It was fun listening to them run through the tree tops.
I would highly recommend a trip to Cat Tien if you like roughing it in nature. However, two days/one night was not enough. Two nights/three days would have been best so we could have done some farther hikes. Also, in the early early morning there are gibbon treks. They only take 4 people every morning and were full when we tried to get in. I think that could be really fun as well.
I've found in Vietnam that getting somewhere is just half the battle, you have to get back as well. We were dropped off on the side of the road again. No signs, no chairs, really no proof that was where we were supposed to be. This time transport was not waiting for us. So we waited, and waited, and waited, then it started to rain... These very nice Vietnamese shop owners brought us into their store, gave us tiny platic chairs to sit on and looked over our ticket. None of them spoke english, so we got to play charades for a few minutes. Eventually a bus came by, they flagged it down, spoke to the driver and we got on. This was definitely not our bus, but hey, we made it back to Ho Chi Minh.
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