Wildlife spotting in Cat Tien Park

The wildlife spotting at Cat Tien National Park was less than advertised. The kinds of large mammals--wild water buffalo, large cats, elephants, primates and of course the Javanese Rhino--are just highly unlikely to be something you encounter on the typical guided tour that stays close to the park headquarters. In fact, one guide told me that no one had EVER seen the rhinos in person--that they've only been spotted via camera traps.

Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun and did see a lot of smaller wildlife, including one very close call with a monocled cobra. We also spotted one real-life example of the mascot of this website, the Asian Civet Cat, as well as lots and lots of civet poop.

We used Sinhbalo Adventure Tours and again had a great experience with them. They driver and our guide--Huy--picked us up at our hotel early on Friday and then picked up another traveler--Hermann, a high school P.E. teacher from Austria. We drove about 4 hours to get to the park entrance. First you take a simple ferry boat across the Dong Nai River. We checked into our room, which was about the equivalent of a mountain lodge in a national park in the U.S., except you share it with more lizards. We had a delicious lunch in the canteen and then a siesta. My one complaint is that for all the trouble and expense I would rather have gotten underway on our first hike sooner than 2:30.

Gearing up for the hike includes putting on leech socks and leech repellent. The socks are similar to gaiters, made of cotton and worn inside your shoes and over your pants. Then you smear the repellent like a barrier around your calf. They were absolutely necessary--long pants alone won't cut it. Ilene and I and everyone one else we hiked with found at least half a dozen leeches on their clothing. The leeches I pictured beforehand I guess are aquatic leeches and didn't resemble these at all--at least not before they had a chance to fill with blood. They look like very tiny worms, and they stand upright waving one end in the air and they have an amazing ability to spring from that position. Anticipating them was creepy, but in the end they were harmless.

Huy joined us for the hike but handed us over to a ranger--Trung--who was very knowledgeable and friendly and did a great job of spotting various insects and identifying trees and bird cries and so on for us. I wasn't able to record the names of most of the trees. One large variety is called a Vietnamese Redwood. Much larger than those are a kind of tree where the roots stay near the surface and make spectacular ropey waves. That's the kind the two of us are standing in front of in the picture above. Another neat plant was taro, which are the very large green leaves pictured below. The coolest thing is the strangler vines. They set their roots into the top of a tall tree and then start sending the vines down and taking over. Sometimes you find a kind of woven basket of vines in the shape of the tree that used to be there before it died and decayed.

It was in the middle of the first hike that we encountered the cobra. We were walking in file, with Trung and Ilene ahead. They apparently stepped over it, because I first spotted the movement as I was stepping over it. I got a good look at it behind my heel and then me and Hermann, who was behind me, were both yelling "snake!" It was between black and dark grey and about as thick as the handle of a tennis racket. I got one glimpse of its head and then it was straightened out and moving really fast toward the brush. I kept trying to move my eyes ahead to see its head again but it moved so fast I only kept glimpsing near the tail. I estimated it about 1.5 meters and Hermann says 2 meters. Trung never saw it, but based on our descriptions, he says it was a cobra. When we spotted another much smaller and harmless snake later and hollered, Trung about jumped in a tree.

After dinner, we had the night safari. You pile in the back of a jeep rigged with benches, and a ranger drives quite recklessly down the paved roads while another ranger stands in back and shines a powerful spotlight into the trees and grass. When he sees a light reflecting back out of the eyes of something, he raps the hood of the truck, and the driver screeches to a halt. The animals mostly just watch warily unless we're too close, and then we have to look fast as they scamper. We saw a civet cat this way, one mouse deer, and a couple dozen sambar deer.

The next day we took a jeep to a drop-off point and from there took a 10km hike to the crocodile swamp and back. We spotted a couple interesting birds on the way and also while resting at the ranger station at the swamp. We encountered some macaques, which our guide spotted but we never did. We could only hear their cries and see the tree tops rustling.

We were back at the camp by lunch time, and after that and showering, we ferried back over to meet our driver. We had a good time getting to know our guides along the way. Huy and his wife had twin boys five months ago, and they hope to move to her parents' house in the provinces to open a pharmacy, which is her profession. Trung is a genuine conservationist who has worked 15 years in jobs like this. He is the one person we've met with some ind of academic expertise whose English was good enough that we could learn about it. He hitched a ride back to Saigon with us, because he had an English exam, which he needs to pass to get licensed to be a tour guide, which he would like to expand into. We dropped him off at a crossroads in the suburbs so he could have dinner first with some family and then we plunged into the city traffic for the last push and were home in time for an early dinner.

-Robert

Snakes and leeches!

We're safely back in Saigon from our hike in the forest, without even a mosquito bite, but with a tale to tell about narrowly missing much worse. We'll write after we catch up on sleep. In the meantime, enjoy the photos in the slide show on the right.

How to cross the street in Saigon

I just realized this text and this video together make it appear that it's a video of me crossing the street. Not at all. It's taken as I walk halfway around the inside of the traffic circle at Cho Ben Thanh, from the Sept. 23rd Park side to the start of Le Loi Avenue. A few seconds of it show some people as the cross the street.

1. Stand upstream of a local, and do what they do. (Note this only works on a one-way street. Otherwise, when you get to the opposite half of the street, you're the one who's upstream.)

2. Wait for a large vehicle or a crowd of motorbikes to cross and take advantage of the temporary jam.

3. Look both ways and then look every other possible way--360 on the horizontal and vertical planes. There is no such thing is a lane or a way or even a street, really. Streams of traffic can develop behind you on the sidewalk you're stepping off of.

4. Do keep moving steadily and slowly. Establish a pace and let everyone see it. After that, even if a truck is bearing down on you, ignore you're instincts to dart, stop, or jump back.

5. As you are moving, "take your space" as they say in soccer. Ignore the lifetime of training of waiting until the traffic has passed. Instead, step in front of the traffic wherever there is a space and take it away from the vehicle coming toward you. Crowd that vehicle toward your front forcing it slow down to get around you safely. When the stream eventually gets too choked in front, it will start breaking behind you.

Favorite places-Nhu Lan Bakery

One of several posts to featuring some of our favorite places in Saigon.

Nhu Lan Bakery is more of a favorite of Ilene's than of mine. She and another traveling companion discovered it on an earlier trip and it became a regular place for the two of them, and it's about the first place Ilene wants to check in with on each visit now.

I don't know what this kind of restaurant is called in Vietnamese, which there seems to be at least one of in every neighborhood, but the atmosphere most resembles a New York deli like Katz's, except with table service, as well as take-away. There's always a strong local vibe and the staff have a no-smile, seen-it-all attitude. Cheap, plentiful, fresh food is the main attraction, as well as watching the hustle. Nhu Lan in particular always has a hum of traffic in the evening of people examining the cold cases on the sidewalk to find a dinner to take home or seated on the stools inside gobbling something before a night class.

They have a big variety of a kind of meat pie made with sweet, flaky, pastry-like dough and stuffed with various meat or sweet bean pastes. Also lots of banh mi--sandwiches with shaved meat or poultry. Ilene's favorite dishes--fresher than in most places, in her opinion--are the spring rools and banh cuon, moist rice flour wrappers stuffed with spicy ground pork and dunked in fish sauce. I love the fresh fruit juices and shakes. Most dishes are about $1.25.

On the side is a small grocery of things dried or canned that are good to stock the hotel room with--jars of sour or salted plums, for example, which Ilene is addicted to.

Nhu Lan is at the corner of Ham Nghi and Cong Tru not far from where Nguyen Hue butts into the river. While you're in the neighborhood, head one block west to find the entrance to and stroll through the "old market" that operates on Ton Tham Dat Street.

-Robert

Trekking in Cat Tien National Park

We leave early in the morning for a two-day hike looking for wildlife in Cat Tien National Park. We'll be back late Saturday local time. In the meantime, you can learn about the park here:

http://www.namcattien.org/

Ilene's Vietnamese language exam results

Ilene passed her language exam, of course. That's her tutor, Tuan, getting the news with her. He's translating the fine print on her certificate for me, and like everything else in her scholastic career, it basically says she's the smartest kid in class. (Not that past experience helped her feel any more confident beforehand. When she's in the old folks home she'll probably worry that she's not fully prepared for bingo.)

Kidding aside, this was her main goal of the trip, and she worked super hard on it. The certificate actually says she passed the equivalent of a five-month course of study, even though it was about 1 month with Tuan in January 2008 , 2 months this summer and a lot of homemade self-guided study in the meantime.

-Robert

Chua Giac Lam--Giac Lam Pagoda

Note: For most of the blog entries, there are many more pictures in the albums on the right. (Usually the one titled Vietnam 2008.) In this case, there are several especially nice pix of the trip to this temple.

Today I visited Giac Lam Pagoda, which is in a more remote district than most sites I've been to in HCMC proper. (20 minutes by taxi from District 1.) I saved it for near the end of my trip when I'm getting overly familiar with everything in walking distance of our hotel. It's one of the larger temple complexes I've seen and there was no sign of any other western tourist. It's definitely worth the trip if you have a morning and about $4.50 in cab fare each way to spare.

The guidebook describes it as the oldest temple in the city. I assume it's the institution that is the oldest and not the building itself, which is a modern structure. In fact, they are in the process of constructing a new temple adjacent to the current one. Of course, there's a collection box for that and for ongoing operations and their charitable programs, and I always take along all the small bills I've collected to contribute.

This morning when I visited, there was some kind of ceremony going on involving a nun--an initiation, perhaps. (One of the drawbacks of making my own way on these visits is I don't learn much that isn't plainly visible, so most of the time I'm just guessing at what's going on around me.) It was shortly before lunch time, and a couple of the long tables in the dining hall were set, and a lot of monks were hovering around checking in on the ceremony and waiting for it to conclude.

One thing I got a kick out of was discovering the source of the music that accompanied the chants. It was all coming over a loud sound system. I assumed the melody line, in the five-tone scale recognizable from most traditional music in the east, was coming from some kind of old-time zither or lute. When I came around the corner of the Buddha alter in the main hall, I saw that the sound was coming from an old purple Fender Stratocaster, played by a monk sitting cross legged on the floor. He was shredding the bottom two strings, and the drummer was going at it pretty hard too. Everyone once in awhile the drummer laid down his sticks and picked up a zither, and he had a way of playing a loud wooden knocker with his tapping foot while his hands were busy.

The building behind the main temple is a mausoleum with hundreds of small cubicles for the ashes of the deceased. Two funerals were going on in separate corners when I stepped in, with a few family members gathered around a chanting monk while they loaded up one of the cubicles. Each one typically included an urn with a photo of the deceased and the kit they'll need in the next world--paper money, joss sticks, tea cups. Many of them had personal mementos, too. Near the back of the building, the photos were from decades ago and near the front, they got more and more contemporary. One that caught my eye had a remote control race car with a Power Rangers doll riding in it, and a little plastic replica of a desktop computer--favorite past times I assumed of the little boy whose picture was on the urn.

-Robert

Don't tell our mothers . . . Motorbiking video

Our mothers are going to be appalled, I know, but we ride motorbikes a lot here. It's more or less necessary if you're going to keep company with anyone local. They think we're crazy for spending money on taxis when there's always a motorbike to be squeezed on to the back of. And there's always a fuss with finding us spare helmets, since it's a law now, so if one isn't at hand our hosts sometimes suggest that the police won't stop a foreigner without a helmet, but I insist we find enough.

On this trip, each of us riding behind a friend, we're going out to dinner on a Saturday evening with relatively light traffic. This give a little sense of the lawlessness of the roads. But even that is changing rapidly. You'll see that we're stopped a couple times at traffic lights, and those were nonexistent or totally ignored on our previous trips. But in general, there is no such thing as yielding the right of way, and the most operative law is that might makes right.

-Robert

Rocking Out With the Youth of Saigon-Part II

Turn down the volume on your computer speakers before you play this video, because it rocks hard.

Actually you'll want to turn it down because the audio quality is very poor. The mic on my camera was overwhelmed. But I wanted to show this very enthusiastic crowd enjoying themselves at a nightclub. I take back what I implied in an earlier post about the reserved way kids listen to music. They apparently just hadn't heard their favorite song yet.

This is a cover of Bon Jovi's "It's My Life," and twice now we've seen people go nuts for it. This is in a club called Live Acoustic in District 3. It's a large room set up cocktail lounge style with a fair sized stage and pretty high-end furnishings and decor. Like the other place we went to, there's no cover, but the drinks are about 4 times the usual price. It was super crowded, mostly with people college age.

The band came on about 9 and was still going at 11 when we left with our ears ringing. Their repertoire was the power ballads of Bon Jovi, Guns and Roses, Bryan Adams and some of the lesser metal bands of the 80's. A lot of nostalgic songs about the regrettable transition from carefree adolescence to complicated adult relationships. "The Summer of '69" and that kind of thing. The singer was a dead ringer for Sean Lennon, but did a fair impersonation of Axl Rose.

When the band started, there was an air guitar champion in front already too drunk for his friends to control. He was on his feet and shouting through all the songs. Two private security guards who looked like retired army to me came out to him about four times to warn him. Then they hauled out his less drunk and less obnoxious sidekick, kicking and screaming, as a last warning. Then they finally led him out relatively peacefully. (I put the camera away for that, and you'll notice that there are no police or military in any of my pictures, even though it's not easy to point a camera in Saigon without capturing someone in uniform.)

The heckler had everyone on edge, and when he was finally gone, the crowd really loosened up. This song broke the seal, and after that point the singer stayed away from the mic and let the crowd take lead vocals on the rest of the songs, the lyrics to which they all knew by heart.

-Robert

Censored

I saw a reference to a report by the U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Watch and went online to find out more. But their website is one that is blocked at the virtual border by the Vietnamese government. I can't read it on this end. If you are some place with more choice in your reading matter, you can see see what Human Rights Watch has to say about Vietnam here: http://www.hrw.org/asia/vietnam.php

The laws of censorship and logic aren't usually fellow travelers, so it shouldn't surprise me that some other sites--presumably equally embarrassing to the Vietnamese government--are accessible on this end:

http://vietnamlist.blogspot.com/
http://www.vietnamhumanrights.net/IndexE.html
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/regions/asia-pacific/viet-nam

-Robert