Doucs and Dong: a completely non-adventurous trip to Vietnam (2 Viewers)

[Chlidonias]

Yeah, south-centre, December to March ist best. In the North better March-April, Jan to Feb can be awfully cold and dark there...

August is worst time indeed. But still way better than sitting around at home...

so March sounds like it would be best then? I had intended to start in the north next time (flying into Hanoi) and head southwards, leaving from either Danang or Saigon, depending on how much time I have for the trip.

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Seven: on the buses

My next stop after Cat Tien would be Mang Den in central Vietnam, sort of halfway between Saigon and Danang but on the inland side of Vietnam rather than the coastal side, so few tourists go anywhere near there. First I had to return to Saigon to catch a bus. I mentioned in an earlier post that there is a local bus between Cat Tien and Saigon, and this bears repeating. Most information you find online says that to get to Cat Tien from Saigon you need to take one of the Dalat-bound tourist buses to the town of Tan Phu (pronounced roughly like "ton foo") and then get a motorbike-taxi from there to Cat Tien. This takes about four hours all up, and costs somewhere in the region of 300,000 Dong (about NZ$21). However the local bus goes straight to the park itself from the Mien Dong station in Saigon, also takes about four hours and costs a third of the price (I bought the ticket for that bus at the reception at Cat Tien so it cost me 120,000, but I watched what the locals were paying as they got on elsewhere and the local rate appeared to be about 80,000). If you are catching the bus in Saigon it would be easy to find because it has the words "BX Nam Cat Tien - Mien Dong" emblazoned across the top of the windshield. The bus seems to run about every hour, so for budget travellers it is a simple way to get to the park. I just read on Tripadvisor one person complaining that the park had "ripped him off" by selling him the ticket for this bus because it turned out to be a local bus and it kept stopping to pick people up and drop people off. I think that handily displays the difference between those who want to experience the country they are travelling in and those who only want to look at it without actually being a part of it (you know, the ones who should just stay at home and buy a book with pretty photos to look at).

Once at the Mien Dong station I checked around for the departure times for buses to Kon Tum which is the town I needed to reach first, en route to Mang Den. The buses for that route, I discovered, run in the morning and the late afternoon, but not during the day. The next one was not until 5pm and would cost 280,000 Dong (N$20). In my original plan for the trip I was going to fly into Saigon on the Saturday afternoon, use Sunday to visit the Saigon Zoo, and then go to Cat Tien on the Monday. Then I thought, I have to come back to Saigon after Cat Tien to catch the bus for Mang Den, so if I use the return day for the zoo I will save myself a day. However it was already 1pm and I had to be back at the bus station by 4.30pm which gave me 3.5 hours, but with traffic that would likely be reduced to only an hour or two at the zoo, plus it was too hot so I decided to just give it a miss. I didn't really want to come back soaked in sweat and then have to sleep on the bus like that.

While I was sitting around waiting for 5pm, an English-speaking chap from one of the ticket counters came to talk to me to practice his English. He also tried to teach me some basic Vietnamese but unfortunately even basic was beyond my capabilities. Vietnamese is a tonal language, like Chinese or Thai, and I simply cannot get my accent around the differences (New Zealanders have vowel sounds which sound strange to foreigners). In tonal languages one word will have multiple meanings depending on how you pronounce or stress the vowels. He used the word ma as an example, which apparently means "mother", "rice plant", "grave", "horse", and "but" depending on how you say it. Not confusing at all. I would try to say a simple word and after four or five attempts he would say "Yes! Perfect!" then I would say it again and he'd say "No!" in despair. Every attempt sounded right to me! I did master xin chao (hello) which is no use because everybody knows "hello" anyway (even Vietnamese answer their phones with "hello?") and I sort of got com suan (rice), tam biet (goodbye) and cam on (thankyou) but only barely. Generally if I tried using any of those words I would have to then explain what they meant so the person I said them to would know what I had said, which sort of defeated the purpose of using them. In most countries with tonal languages where I have tried using local words, whoever I am using them on will just stand there looking at me blankly.

The sleeper bus to Kon Tum was not what I had expected. I have been on many overnight buses in southeast Asia but this one wasn't just a bus used at night, it was a bus apparently designed specifically for night use. Instead of seats it had flat beds, with a lower set and an upper set, like a dorm room on a bus. I have never seen this outside Vietnam. When boarding the bus everyone has to take off their footwear and put them in plastic bags. Most Vietnamese just wear jandals so there was much hilarity from all when my giant's boots needed a bag each. I hadn't been looking forward to taking an overnight bus in Vietnam based on all the bad stories I had heard about the horrific traffic in the country, but actually Vietnamese roads are pretty relaxing compared to other countries in the region. Almost all the vehicles on the roads are scooters - millions of them! - and there are so few trucks and cars, relatively speaking, that there seems little danger of hitting anything big enough to cause damage to a bus. I think it is often the case that stories about roads come from newbies to Asia who don't know what bad traffic is. India was the same for me - just normal Asian traffic.

Unfortunately for me, the bed I had been assigned on the bus was on the upper level, right at the back corner. The brim of my cap was literally brushing the ceiling, the bed itself was about half a foot too short for me and several inches too narrow, and both the air-con vent and music speaker were right next to my head. Imagine an airplane seat flattened out, but right up under the roof and with a line of people all lying next to you like a row of sardines in a can, and that's what it was like. I wedged myself into an uncomfortable position to stay in one place and fit into the space, with one leg on top of my bag in case of thievery. I have been on some nasty overnight bus rides but this was one of the worst. Possibly in one of the lower beds it would have been alright, but not where I was! The next day I discovered I had developed some weird rash all over my face, as if I had been out in the sun too long, and my skin felt like I had been savaging it with sandpaper. I'm pretty sure that was from being right under the air-con all night.

The bus had left Saigon at 5pm and arrived in Kon Tum at 6am the next morning, and that shall be continued in the next post.....


Birds seen today:
Spot-necked Dove Streptopelia chinensis
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
68) Feral Pigeon Columba livia

 

[dalat]

so March sounds like it would be best then? I had intended to start in the north next time (flying into Hanoi) and head southwards, leaving from either Danang or Saigon, depending on how much time I have for the trip.

For a country-wide trip, yes I think March is best. If you go for 3-4 weeks, you could start south mid Feb and start in the Norht beginning to mid March. By then the winter mists usually start to lift. But of course weather is weather and you never know.

Good to see that despite the difficulties you had, you are considering going back. :t:

In case you focus more on birds than primates next time, you should also inlcude Dalat and possibly Yok Don on the way from Cat Tien to central Vietnam, both really good locations and help to cut the long trip in shorter bits.

 

[Chlidonias]

For a country-wide trip, yes I think March is best. If you go for 3-4 weeks, you could start south mid Feb and start in the Norht beginning to mid March. By then the winter mists usually start to lift. But of course weather is weather and you never know.

Good to see that despite the difficulties you had, you are considering going back. :t:

In case you focus more on birds than primates next time, you should also inlcude Dalat and possibly Yok Don on the way from Cat Tien to central Vietnam, both really good locations and help to cut the long trip in shorter bits.

difficulties make trips more fun!

I would have liked to go to Dalat but I didn't have time for both that and Mang Den, and of course there are no doucs at Dalat so that lost out. I get the impression Dalat is easier for birding and I would like especially to see Vietnamese Crossbill.

I haven't heard of Yok Don so I'll look at that.

 

[dalat]

Dalat also has Doucs, but in no way as easy as in Cat Tien, so you're right with your choice... but birding is great there!

Yok Don is near Buon Me Thuot (you probably passed through on the way to Kontum), and is a very nice park, but rarely visited by birders. The habitiat is very unusal for Vietnam, as it is dry Diperocarp forest, like it is more common in Cambodia. If you haven't been in Cambodia before, definitly worth a visit. Mekong Wagtail there, Black-headed Woodpecker, and all relatively easy to see...

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Eight: Mang Den

The bus arrived in Kon Tum at about 6am, dropping a number of passengers off on the outskirts of the city. The driver indicated I should wait and he would take me to the city's actual bus station because they were passing by there anyway, but then once the bus was underway he started making the universal "give me more money" gestures and pulled out a 100,000 Dong note to show how much. Naturally I refused to do this. There was one English speaker on board, and when I asked her to find out what the deal was with this, she asked the driver and then said "he was just joking", which he definitely wasn't!

Anyway, I got off the bus at the station, the bus left, a taxi driver asked if I wanted a taxi, I said no I'm just catching a bus, and went to pick up my pack. Where's my pack? In some totally inexplicable event, I had somehow forgotten to get my pack out of the luggage hold of the bus, simply jumping off with my shoulder bag holding my irreplaceables (camera, binoculars, etc). Luckily there was a taxi driver standing there then! We chased down the bus, retrieved my pack, went back to the station, and it cost me 50,000 Dong (which is about NZ$3.50).

I had read in a recent trip report that the buses to Mang Den (yellow buses and silver mini-buses) don't leave from the main bus station in Kon Tum but from the roundabout 500 metres south. However there was a silver mini-bus at the station which meant that while I was waiting I could get some breakfast and check the bus times from Kon Tum to Danang for later (basically throughout the day, from very early morning). I think the taxi driver was also saying he could take me straight to Mang Den for 500,000 if that's your thing, instead of the 40,000 mini-bus.

The mini-bus left at 7am, spent half an hour driving round town picking up people and cargo, and I got to Mang Den at about 9am. Most of the way the hills were bright green but naked of forest. In many flat areas there were rice paddies utterly bereft of birds. As the road turned up into the hills some forest started appearing but it was all very patchy.

Mang Den is a curious little village set in a strip of pine forest. It is apparently a failed attempt at establishing a hill resort, the many abandoned concrete shells of buildings half-buried in overgrowth testament to that. At one end is a cluster of hotels and karaoke bars, there are a few more hotels strung intermittently along two parallel roads for the next two kilometres, and then there's a big roundabout and "market" (where all the shops and banks are) at the other end. I was thoroughly confused by it all when I first arrived because it was all so fractured, and the signs in the "market" seemed to indicate that that was Kon Plong (which is another town entirely). The bus dropped me at the Hotel Hoa Sim which worked out quite well because there was a girl there named Nhung (pronounced nyum, as in "nyum nyum nyum") who spoke a bit of English. I visited most of the other hotels looking for other English-speakers and it really seemed like she was the only person in Mang Den who spoke any - and she was only going to be there for one more week because she was only working there while on break from University where she was studying "environment" (she didn't know the right English word, so I'm guessing "ecology") - so perfect timing!

The rooms at the Hoa Sim were 250,000 each (about NZ$17) which seemed standard where-ever I went. The first room had no working light in the bathroom, so I moved to another one. That one had a fan that ocellated but didn't actually fan, so I moved to a third room. In that room the tv didn't work, so they gave me a discount to 200,000. Result.

Birders are probably the only tourists to visit Mang Den. I think most birders still go to Dalat more than Mang Den though, both being hill-country sites with many of the same species between them. I didn't have time for both Dalat and Mang Den, and Mang Den was supposed to be where I could find Grey-shanked Doucs so that is why I was here. The village is surrounded by patches of secondary growth forest (beyond the pine forest) but the main bird site is the Mang Canh forest 15km away on the 676 road to Dak Tang.

Most of the first day was spent trying to round up a motorbike driver to take me out to the forest for the next few days. This proved surprisingly difficult (not helped by there being no-one besides Nhung who spoke English). Eventually I found a guy who would take me there for 200,000. Initially he wanted 500,000 return which was ridiculous (i.e. taking me there in the morning and picking me up in the afternoon), so I said I would just walk back. I had the info from Google Earth that the Mang Canh forest was about 17km from town (it turned out to be 15km) but several people said there was forest only 5km up the road, of which I was dubious. The guy who I finally got as a driver seemed to know what was what though. In fact he said that the Mang Canh forest might be mostly cleared now so I might need to go further. I would see the next morning whether this was the case! More disturbingly he also said that the doucs weren't found here any more, which was not good news at all. I had a photocopy of a picture of a Grey-shanked Douc to show people what I was looking for, and the first thing everyone noted when looking at it was the long white tail, proving they were talking about the right species. My driver said the only monkey left in the area was one with a short tail (probably Pig-tailed Macaque, as I saw a baby one in a little cage outside one of the hotels). He said that to find doucs now I would need to go 60 or 70km which wasn't really a good option for me. I hoped that the doucs hadn't been hunted out here, but I wasn't too hopeful. This is why I don't like short trips. On longer trips I can just stay longer somewhere to keep on looking, or I can go off for a week on a wild douc chase, but when the whole trip is only three weeks long that can't be done.


Birds seen today:
69) Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Nine: Mang Den

First thing in the morning I was at the 15km marker stone where the Mang Canh forest begins. It looks like really good forest but it only stretches for three or four kilometres before stopping in bare earth, and all the way along the road there are tracks of various sizes - human, motorbike and truck - which if you follow them in lead quickly to cut-over patches, some already with huts and crops. With the logging, the mining, and the dam construction nearby, the road was continually busy; every few minutes there would be a truck or motorbike roaring past. It seems like the driver was right - it doesn't look like Mang Den is the place to look for doucs any more. In fact in four or five years it won't even be a place to look for birds either. There are a few big signboards here and there along the roads, with one line of English in front of all the Vietnamese text - "Kon Tum Forest Protection and Development Fund". I think the only "protection" is there to keep it ready for "development". From a distance the hills look thick with forest but once inside, or from different viewpoints, you can see that it is really all patchwork, divided up by roads and farms and clearings. I was still hopeful for doucs but the only mammals I saw were a Pallas' Squirrel and three Maritime Striped Squirrels. Since getting back I have been told (by James Eaton) that there is still a troop of doucs in that forest, but everybody while I was there was adamant there were none left. The last one anyone there had seen, apparently, was a year ago when one came down into a garden near the forest and was promptly killed and eaten.

I did see quite a lot of birds in total numbers, although the number of species wasn't high. I added 22 species to the trip list, of which six were lifers. The very first birds I saw in the forest were three Yellow-billed Nuthatches in a bird-wave. There were numerous bird-waves throughout the morning, the dominant species in them being Mountain Fulvettas and White-bellied Yuhina, usually with one or two White-browed Piculets in attendance. Piculets are neat little birds - they are a type of woodpecker, but only the size of a finch, and yet they still act like woodpeckers, tapping away at twigs. Other slightly more random birds amongst the bird-waves included Golden Babblers, Silver-eared Mesias, White-tailed Leaf Warblers, Black-throated Sunbirds, Rufous-faced Warblers and once a small flock of Grey-crowned Tits. Pale-capped Pigeons were really common, especially earlier in the morning when they were often seen flying overhead. Not a sign of any laughing thrushes unfortunately (Chestnut-eared, Golden-winged or Black-hooded), nor Grey-crowned Crocias. I'll just blame the time of year.

The walk back to town was really a pretty easy stroll. There were a few steeper bits as the road wound over the hills, but nothing bad. It was fairly hot though, so it would have been nicer in the winter (it is all through farmland so no shade). All the dogs I passed were far too casual to be threatening, most of them simply lifting their heads to see what I was doing and then going back to sleep. I should mention buses too. When I was in the forest a bus passed me at 7am coming from Mang Den and then going back the opposite way at 8am, so this could be a cheaper way of getting there. However the one which passed me at 1pm never came back again while I was out there, and the next day I didn't see any at all (between 6am and 9am when I was out there).

I saw a few extra birds on the walk back to town. At a fruiting tree there was a lot of activity from minivets (always too far away for me to know which species, so none of them made it onto any of the Vietnam day-lists), Black Bulbuls, Red-whiskered Bulbuls, and there were a couple of Large Cuckoo-shrikes there as well. Even better was when a Black Giant Squirrel bounded across the road like a huge black weasel - they look strange when on the ground! - and once in the trees disappeared quick-smart.

There was rain in the late afternoon, when I was already back at the hotel.

When I had got back to the hotel Nhung was quite excited because another English-speaker had come to stay (she thought her English was too poor for me). This chap's name was Phi and his English was indeed most excellent. He was from Danang, and was travelling as the translator for an Indian engineer who was in Vietnam as a consultant for hydroelectric schemes. The Indian's name was Arrogant Git or something along those lines. He was literally the most rude and unpleasant person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. After five minutes I was sick of his idiocy, and after seeing the way he was treating the staff I was fairly having to restrain myself from just kicking his butt out the door. Phi had the most long-suffering expression, basically having to sit there and put up with this guy because it was his job. The Indian told me that it wasn't my fault if the Vietnamese can't understand me, it is their fault for being too stupid and lazy. Also that "they" are happy cleaning and serving because that is all they are good for - this was directed at Nhung who, as noted earlier, was only working there during her University break where she was doing a four-year degree in ecology. If he wanted something he would wave Nhung over and then just jab his finger over his shoulder at the other side of the room. She would look confused, as one would, and he would point again. She would look over there, then back at him, and then ask what he wanted her to get. So he would just point again! Then Phi would ask in his patient -slash-exasperated tone "what is it you would like her to fetch?" and he would reply in his "my god you are stupid" tone of voice "I want her to bring me..." whatever the thing was. I just wanted to smack the smug right off his face. Thankfully he was only there for that night then they were going to the site of the dam for the next week. I really did pity Phi having to be dealing with him constantly. He reminded me of a balloon, bloated with hot air and the only logical thing your mind can come up with to get rid of him is repeated puncturing with something sharp.


Birds seen today:
70) Yellow-billed Nuthatch Sitta solangiae
71) White-bellied Yuhina Erpornis zantholeuca
72) Bar-winged Flycatcher-shrike Hemipus picatus
73) Pale-capped Pigeon Columba punicea
74) Grey-headed Canary-flycatcher Culicicapa ceylonensis
75) Mountain Fulvetta Alcippe peracensis
76) White-tailed Leaf Warbler Phylloscopus davisoni
77) Hill Prinia Prinia atrogularis
78) White-browed Piculet Sasia ochracea
79) Black-throated Sunbird Aethopyga saturata
Dark-necked Tailorbird Orthotomus atrogularis
80) Maroon Oriole Oriolus traillii
81) Golden-throated Barbet Megalaima franklinii
82) Silver-eared Mesia Leiothrix argentauris
Green-billed Malkoha Phaenicophaeus tristis
83) Rufous-faced Warbler Abroscopus albogularis
84) Grey-crowned Tit Aegithalos annamensis
85) Golden Babbler Stachridopsis chrysaea
86) Ashy Drongo Dicrurus leucophaeus
87) Mountain Hawk-eagle Spizaetus nipalensis
88) Black Bulbul Hypsipetes leucocephalus
89) Large Cuckoo-shrike Coracina macei
90) Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus
Oriental Magpie-Robin Copsychus saularis
91) Long-tailed Shrike Lanius schach
Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos


Mammals seen today:
15) Maritime Striped Squirrel Tamiops maritimus
Pallas' (Red-bellied) Squirrel Callosciurus erythraeus
16) Black Giant Squirrel Ratufa bicolor

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Ten: Mang Den

Yesterday I had found that I had seen quite a lot of birds in the first part of the morning, much fewer in the middle of the day (at this time of year it was quite hot midday, even though I was up in the hills), and the walk back to town was wasted time, so today I just went out to the forest for the morning and got the driver to wait there for me (so 300,000 Dong for today's trip). If there was a chance for doucs I would have stayed out there all day again, but it seemed that there was no chance at all for that, so I figured I would do a bit of birding today, and then the next day carry on northwards. I wasn't really into it to be honest, after being told there were no doucs here any more.

The morning was much quieter than yesterday. First bird in the forest were two Red-headed Trogons right off the bat. I had seen some of these yesterday but only as flashes of red as they flew away; these ones both perched in full view long enough to actually see them. The trogons seemed to be very common here, I saw or heard a number of them over the two days. However I saw nothing else for the whole next hour. Nothing at all! There were only a couple of bird-waves seen later during the morning, unlike the near-constant ones yesterday. A couple of birds not seen yesterday were a Pale Blue Flycatcher and a number of Mountain Bulbuls. One of the bird-waves contained a Yellow-cheeked Tit amongst the fulvettas and yuhinas.

In a cleared area there was a group of Black-collared Starlings calling from a bare tree, and something big - probably a Silver Pheasant - dashed off the road before I even got a chance to see it. While trying to relocate it, I got to see the best bird of the day - nay, of the trip! - when a big flock of at least twenty Grey-headed Parrotbills appeared. They are huge! I would have expected them to be the size of all the little bubby parrotbills I had seen in China but these things I thought were going to be bulbuls or something until I got a proper look at them. They look almost like cartoons come to life, with their oversized bright orange beaks, kind of like if you crossed a puffin with a sparrow. Fantastic birds.

Back at the hotel Phi was in the lobby, waiting for the idiot Indian to get ready to leave an hour ago. He had a chat to my driver, and then told me that the driver knew a place where I "might" be able to see doucs because the road wasn't so busy (because, as it turned out, it wasn't fit for traffic) and he could take me there tomorrow morning, but it was two hours distant and would cost 400,000 for the day. I had been going to give up on Grey-shanked Doucs and leave the next day, but any chance is a good chance so I would definitely take it! Amongst other things I found out with Phi there to translate was that douc meat sells for 250,000 Dong per kilo which is very cheap, and what their Vietnamese name is. Douc comes from the French when they controlled South Vietnam and was derived from a native name. I have always pronounced it to rhyme with either book or spook, depending on whatever comes out of my mouth first. At Cat Tien the guides I talked to pronounced it "dick" (which gives the title of this thread an unintended bawdiness!) and elsewhere in Vietnam I had also heard it the two ways I pronounce it. Phi himself pronounced it "doosh" - but then he said that he thought it was an English word and was trying to pronounce it the way he thought it would be. So all the different pronunciations I had heard in Vietnam were basically because the person either thought it was English and was approximating how they thought it would be said, or they thought it was Vietnamese and was saying it as spelled (hence "dick"). The actual Vietnamese name, I found out, is vooc, which is pronounced "vock" - this is the word the French took and corrupted into douc. The lesson of all of this is, pronounce it however you want because it isn't a real word anyway.

Because tomorrow's douc search was going to cost me 400,000 (about NZ$28) I wouldn't have quite enough Dong in my pocket to cover the hotel bill when I left so I took a walk up the road to the "market" where there was a Vietinbank ATM. I had been told this was the only ATM in town. Unfortunately it declined my card which left me in a bit of a sticky situation. I was thinking I was going to have to take the bus all the way back to Kon Tum (45km, or two hours away) just to find a bank which accepted Visa. Back at the hotel I asked Nhung and found out that there was also an Agribank ATM here. That was good news because I have used their ATMs before in other countries and I know they take Visa. The limit for most ATMs in Vietnam is two million Dong which sounds like a lot but is really only about NZ$140. My bank charges a NZ$6 overseas transaction fee every time I use an ATM when travelling, so to get out large sums of money somewhere with stupid currency like Vietnam or Indonesia quickly racks up the fees.

Once again, the only rain of the day came through in the late afternoon.


Birds seen today:
Long-tailed Shrike Lanius schach
Pale-capped Pigeon Columba punicea
Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos
92) Red-headed Trogon Harpactes erythrocephalus
Black-throated Sunbird Aethopyga saturata
93) Mountain Bulbul Hypsipetes mcclellandii
94) Pale Blue Flycatcher Cyornis unicolor
Mountain Fulvetta Alcippe peracensis
Large Cuckoo-shrike Coracina macei
Golden Babbler Stachridopsis chrysaea
White-bellied Yuhina Erpornis zantholeuca
White-browed Piculet Sasia ochracea
White-tailed Leaf Warbler Phylloscopus davisoni
95) Yellow-cheeked Tit Parus spilonotus
96) Black-collared Starling Sturnus nigricollis
97) Black-winged Cuckoo-shrike Coracina melaschistos
98) Grey-headed Parrotbill Paradoxornis gularis

 

[dalat]

Hi Chlidonas,

Quite entertaining to read your reports, with interesting sidelines about arrogant foreigners and vietnamese pronounciation of species names .

Btw, I found the word Voọc quite commonly known among Vietnamese, even by non Biologists. Vietnamese seem to be used to distinguish between Voọc (doucs and langurs), vượn (gibbons) and khỉ (macaques). Khỉ is also used as general "monkey". But of course many local names are probably common.

Congrats to the Parrotbill (used to be the same species as the one in Dalat, but now split I think) and the Pale-headed Dove. Mang Den is the only place in Vietnam where I've ever seen the Doves.

Pity you weren't lucky with the Laughers. They are really tough without tape.

 

[Chlidonias]

Hi Chlidonas,

Quite entertaining to read your repots, with interesting sidelines about arrogant foreigners and vietnamese pronounciation of species names .

Btw, I found the word Voọc quite commonly known among Vietnamese, even by non Biologists. Vietnamese seem to be used to distinguish between Voọc (doucs and langurs), vượn (gibbons) and khỉ (macaques). Khỉ is also used as general "monkey". But of course many local names are probably common.

Congrats to the Parrotbill (used to be the same species as the one in Dalat, but now split I think) and the Pale-headed Dove. Mang Den is the only place in Vietnam where I've ever seen the Doves.

Pity you weren't lucky with the Laughers. They are really tough without tape.

yes, once I knew voọc everybody knew what I was talking about, and I heard some mention of vượn at Mang Den as well (I found it amusing that all gibbons were named Vern).

Without tapes, laughing thrushes are just one of those species that sometimes pop up easily and sometimes remain forever unseen. I was very happy with the parrotbills!

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Eleven: Mang Den

We set off early morning for today's douc hunt. First we headed along the 676 road but about halfway to the Mang Canh forest we took a right turn onto a side road. This road started off well - it was being prepared to be sealed so was nice and smooth - but after the first village it suddenly became less of a road and more of a pile of rocks dumped across the hills in a line. Mostly it was just really really bad, sometimes extending to "I think I broke my tailbone" bad. This was more like my sort of travel, going off on a crazy motorbike ride over a rollercoaster of rocks looking for an animal which I wouldn't find. Because you know the old saying, "if you don't go looking for a Grey-shanked Douc, you'll never see a Grey-shanked Douc".

Every so often we would stop to scan the forest but at regular points there were temporary encampments for mining which probably meant any larger animals had already been hunted out. Whenever the driver asked about doucs they always shook their heads and pointed further ahead. After about two hours, when the road got to a point where the bike couldn't take me any more, we went back the way we had come. Part way back we took another fork. This road was about the same level of badness but composed of earth rather than rocks and so not as violent to use. This road eventually turned into a morass of mud churned up by trucks, so I walked for a bit until we reached a paved highway. This was much easier because I could keep a look out for monkeys while we rode, instead of just trying to stay on the back of the bike!

When the forest ran out we went up yet another road, this one an inexplicably well-paved one over the hills, only about ten feet wide with the undergrowth encroaching in from either side. It was like riding through a long-abandoned botanical gardens. I have no idea what this road is used for: there were no human activities along it (no houses, farms, nothing) and it simply came off the highway at one point and returned to the same highway at a further point. Really strange. It was very steep in some parts, necessitating me to walk up some sections. There were a few nice viewpoints and I spent a bit of time scanning the surrounding hillsides. Two Black Giant Squirrels were seen but no doucs.

Just after coming back onto the highway the rain came thundering down in sheets. We took shelter with several other motorcyclists in a roadside shack for half an hour until it petered out. Not long after heading off again, however, it came down harder than ever. A quick detour took us off the highway, along a dirt track (now more of a muddy streambed) and onto another paved road where we took further shelter in a small shop, although we were already comprehensively soaked by then. After an hour the rain still hadn't let up, so we bought a couple of disposable plastic raincoats to continue back to Mang Den. Mine split open as soon as I put it on - it was not made for anyone bigger than a Vietnamese person! - but it would keep my bag dry at least. The paved road lead eventually all the way back to Mang Den, where it was not raining when we arrived. This was the only day of the entire trip where rain made itself into a problem.


Birds seen today:
Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos
Long-tailed Shrike Lanius schach
Pale-capped Pigeon Columba punicea
Blue-bearded Bee-eater Nyctyornis athertoni
99) Grey Wagtail Motacilla cinerea
Yellow-billed Nuthatch Sitta solangiae
Dark-necked Tailorbird Orthotomus atrogularis
Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus
Ashy Drongo Dicrurus leucophaeus


Mammals seen today:
Black Giant Squirrel Ratufa bicolor

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Twelve: even more buses

Just a short entry for Day Twelve because it was a travel day. Nhung had booked a seat on a bus for me for 7am, but that bus arrived at 6.40am, waited outside the gates for about 30 seconds and then left, so I just flagged down the next one from the side of the road at 7.15am. I got into Kon Tum at 8.50am, and found a bus bound for Danang which was leaving at 9.30am and cost 200,000 Dong. This was another silver mini-bus; the impression I got was that all the day buses running this route are the mini-buses and all the big buses were the overnight sleeper buses.

The bus got into Danang at 4.30pm. It had rained almost the entire way. My intention had been to stay in Danang that night - there is always at least one cheap hotel next to any bus station - and head on to Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park the next day, possibly after having made a visit to the Son Tra peninsula outside Danang to look for Red-shanked Doucs. However I thought I'd find out the bus schedules for the next day before finding a hotel, and there was actually another mini-bus sitting there ready to leave at 5pm. The driver assured me he was going to Phong Nha and I would get there by 10pm. This didn't seem quite right (I knew it should be six to seven hours from Danang to Phong Nha) but what the heck. I hadn't yet had any vehicular accidents, such as are requisite for one of my Asia trips, and three bus trips in one day would surely triple my chances. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side your flipped coin is buttered on, even tripling my chances did not result in any road accidents. In fact there weren't any traffic incidents for the entire trip which amply demonstrates how completely non-adventurous this holiday really was.

I'm still waiting for the day when as I walk away unhurt from a crash, the car explodes into a fireball behind me, but I don't turn around because cool guys don't look at explosions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqz5dbs5zmo

As it happens, the mini-bus wasn't bound for Phong Nha at all. Instead they kicked me out in some city, I knew not where, at 11.40pm. But I didn't care. After sixteen hours on buses I just wanted to lie down in a cheap hotel and go to sleep.



Birds seen today:
Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos
Feral Pigeon Columba livia
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
White-throated Kingfisher Halcyon smyrnensis

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Thirteen: Phong Nha

Early in the morning I went out to look for an ATM and try to gain some idea of how to get to Phong Nha. I discovered several things quite quickly. Firstly the mystery city that I was in was Dong Hoi, which is about 40km from Phong Nha (which is the village, aka Son Trach, next to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park). Secondly, it was already exceedingly hot, even so early in the morning. Thirdly, the Agribank ATM I found did not have any money in it. Fourthly, I happily found out that ATMs of the BIDV bank have an upper withdrawal amount of three million Dong instead of only two million. And finally, and most agreeably, I found out that there are regular green and yellow buses going to Phong Nha from the roadside in town (i.e. local buses, not from an actual bus station) and they cost 33,000 Dong (about NZ$2.30).

I guess it takes about two hours from Dong Hoi to Phong Nha - I wasn't really paying attention to the time - and as per usual for Vietnam there were no birds to be seen along the way. Phong Nha turned out to be a fairly pleasant village, albeit one composed almost entirely of hotels, restaurants and tour operators. It was packed to the gunnels with tourists of all kinds, but seemingly dominated by white backpackers. They were crawling everywhere, like a plague of pubic lice. The same sort of backpackers who I would see turning up to Crocodile Lake, take a five second look at the lake with an exclamation of "wow, that's beautiful", and then all just sit down with their backs to it and talk earnestly about home and what was happening on the latest episode of Game of Thrones and what their Lonely Planet said they should go look at next. The most popular collection-point for them in Phong Nha appears to be the Easy Tiger Hostel which is like a flame to these moths. The manager of this Vietnamese hostel was a big fat Irish guy named Sean, which probably tells you all you need to know. I just popped in there to get a map of the park and then got the heck out. My preference for somewhere to stay was a cheapish Chinese hotel called the Binh Minh.

The reason I had come to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park was to do with monkeys, again. The main species I wanted to try and see was the Hatinh Langur which is one of the black and white "Francois Langur group" (a group of closely-related Indochinese leaf monkeys which are restricted to limestone karst forests). All of the six or seven species in this group spend their days in the forest feeding and retire at night to sleep on sheer cliff-faces to escape predators. In theory seeing the Hatinh Langurs should be fairly straightforward because I knew where their preferred cliffs were, so it should just be a matter of being there in the late afternoon or early morning.

The other primates which I was interested in at Phong Nha were Red-shanked Doucs which depending on which trip reports you read are either easy or difficult to see there; and Indochinese Black Langurs and White-cheeked Gibbons, neither of which I actually expected to see based on what I had been reading.

From various trip reports I knew the cliffs where the Hatinh Langurs sleep were by the western entry point of the park, at the Tro Mong entrance next to the Dark Cave (although nobody seemed to know what I was talking about when I called it the Tro Mong entrance, even though it is called that on the map). For the other species I only knew that Jon Hall from Mammalwatching had written that the Black Langurs were "often seen" near the Tam Co Temple on the road to Laos. To find out more I tracked down a local chap named Hai who runs Hai's Eco Conservation Tours. He is also the owner of the Bamboo Cafe which happened to be right across the road from my hotel. Before coming here I had been under the impression that entry to the park required a permit and guide, which my wallet didn't like the sound of, but upon arrival I discovered that this was not the case at all. Individual elements within the park have entry fees (e.g. the various caves and the Botanical Gardens) but the park itself is free with unrestricted access. However when I thought I would need a guide I had found out about Hai and figured he would be a good choice. I popped in to see him to talk about monkeys. He confirmed the place for the Hatinh Langurs was by the western entrance and told me the best times in the afternoon and morning to try and see them; he said the Red-shanked Doucs were extremely difficult to find so I wouldn't see them; and he said to not even bother looking for the White-cheeked Gibbons or Black Langurs because "nobody ever sees them, even researchers coming here to study them can't find them." I had really limited time so I decided to just hope for the Hatinh Langurs - the others could wait for some future return trip.

The access in the park consists of a basic loop road, off the bottom of which are two other roads, one leading to Khe San and the other to Laos. The village of Phong Nha sits up around the top right-ish of the loop road. The northern portion of the loop is through farmland and the bottom portion is in the forest (in the park itself). The whole loop is around 65km long I think. Rather inconveniently the place where the Hatinh Langur cliffs are is on the opposite side of the loop from the village. There's no route through the middle because it is all limestone peaks, so whichever way you take to get there is a distance of about 20 or 25km. First I had to find a motorbike driver to take me there (before I go back to Vietnam for my next trip I am really going to have to reacquaint myself with how to ride a motorbike!) and this was bizarrely difficult. I had somewhat assumed that because the village basically only exists because of all the people visiting the park, that the locals would know all about the Hatinh Langurs and other monkey species there. But no. Every time I would say that I was here to look for monkeys the immediate response was "go to the Botanical Gardens." (The monkeys there are ex-pet Rhesus Macaques which live in a "wild enclosure" to try and rehabilitate them for release). I would explain about the Hatinh Langurs and how they sleep on the cliffs, and the person would flatly refuse that this was true and then say something like "you cannot see monkeys in the nature - you can only see them at the Botanical Gardens!" I mean, seriously, I'm giving you handfuls of cash to simply take me to the other side of the park and then just wait while I look around, why are you turning this down?! It wasn't even like it was some awkward destination - it was literally right by where all the other tourists go to visit the Dark Cave! Gaaah! Eventually I did find someone who was happy to take my money, oddly enough at the Duong Homestay which was directly across the street from my hotel and right next door to the Bamboo Cafe. I should have just gone in there first!

Hai had told me that the best time to see the Hatinh Langurs was between 4.00 and 6.30pm when they would be going onto the cliffs to sleep (it gets dark at about 6.30) and between 5.00 and 6.30am when they would be leaving in the morning. I had a bit of time before then, so I tried going for a little walk outside the village to find some birds. This idea didn't stay with me long because it was as hot as the last days on Earth when the sun is burning up the planet. Before I crept back inside for some shade I did see Paddyfield Pipit and my first mynahs of the trip with a little flock of White-vented Mynahs. That's right, thirteen days in and the first mynahs.

I was round at the cliffs by the Tro Mong entrance before 4pm. I wandered all up and down that road scanning every cliff I could until dark. There were mosquitoes in abundance, but no langurs. I think the driver was probably thinking "yup, no monkeys live on the cliffs - stupid tourist!" I'm guessing the langurs in that area have multiple sleeping cliffs, not all of which are by the road, and they just go to whichever one is closest to where they were feeding that day. Otherwise I cannot explain not seeing them.

I had dinner at the Why Not Cafe where the service was poor and the food almost inedible. That's probably where they got the name from ("Shall we eat at that place tonight?" "Eh, why not..."). There are Pigmy Slow Loris at Phong Nha, but it would be an eight kilometre walk to the closest entry into the forest so I didn't go spot-lighting at all.

Here's a video for a song about Khe San. If you aren't familiar with Cold Chisel, you should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNA4ELdkYCo



Birds seen today:
100) House Swift Apus nipalensis
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
102) White-vented Mynah Acridotheres grandis
Spot-necked Dove Streptopelia chinensis
White-throated Kingfisher Halcyon smyrnensis
103) Paddyfield Pipit Anthus rufulus
Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Fourteen: Phong Nha to Bach Ma

I had decided that in the morning I would check the cliffs for Hatinh Langurs again, just in case they had somehow appeared there without me seeing them last night, and then head to the Tam Co temple to see if there might be any Black Langurs hanging around there, while also keeping a look out for Red-shanked Doucs. I had arranged with the driver to head off at 5am. Instead I was banging on his door until 5.15 before he woke up, and we didn't get to the cliffs until 5.45 which is a fair way after dawn. No luck with finding Hatinh Langurs.

The dogs around Phong Nha are strangely aggressive in the mornings. During the day they are harmless, but in the morning on the way to the cliffs two separate dogs tried attacking the bike on the road, and when heading south through the park three dogs came tearing out from the entrance to the "Eco Trail" and chased us for half a kilometre. I'm not sure if they were actually trying to get us but their teeth were snapping far too close to my feet for comfort!

I left the driver waiting at the Tam Co temple and walked along the road to Laos for an hour or so. No Black Langurs of course (I think Jon Hall's "often seen" is wildly optimistic!) although I think I heard some distant gibbons. Bird-wise the only ones I saw were two unidentified drongos, a male minivet too far away to tell which species it was, and a couple of Stripe-throated Bulbuls. Recently I was told that there's a Red-shanked Douc troop which hangs out right near the temple which would have been useful to know when I was there, and that there is another Hatinh Langur troop in this area as well, on the cliffs on the other side of the river. I had been looking at the cliffs while there but hadn't seen anything (it would have been too late in the morning for the langurs to have still been on them anyway). At least it's all information I can use for the next time!

I don't know if Phong Nha is always so dead or if it was just the time of year or because I was too focussed on trying to find monkeys and ignoring the birds, but in the afternoon I caught a bus south to the city Hue with almost literally nothing to show for the visit. It would have repaid a longer stay I think, but really I had just slotted Phong Nha in as a quick visit and was anxious to get to Bach Ma National Park. There are Red-shanked Doucs at Bach Ma but given my abysmal primate-finding record after the very good start at Cat Tien, things weren't looking too hopeful!

There are local buses from Phong Nha to Dong Hoi and then from there to Hue, and I think there is a direct local bus between Phong Nha and Hue, but I just got a tourist bus which cost 180,000 (which I'm pretty sure was considerably higher than the real price, but thems the breaks). The bus was another mini-bus. I would have preferred being crammed into a local mini-bus with regular folk than crammed into a mini-bus with other backpackers, but at least it was only a four hour trip to Hue so much faster than the local alternatives. The main saving grace was two solid hours of Metallica which brought joy to my cold metal heart. I'm not sure the other passengers were old enough to appreciate the fine musical tastes of the driver.

Passing through a town called Dong Ha I saw a few unidentified fly-by mynahs, and dozens of what looked like wagtails perched in flocks on houses or wheeling over them.

Hue turned out to be a big brash city glowing with neon, not quite what I was expecting. The bus dropped everyone at Pham Ngu Lao - I guess all the major cities in Vietnam have named their backpacker street Pham Ngu Lao. The street was swarming with tourists, and touts passed by on motorbikes every couple of minutes offering girls, marijuana and cocaine. I just went into the first hotel I saw, the Phuoc An-DMZ Hotel, my arms loaded with a pile of girls, marijuana and cocaine, and got a room there for what I was told was 120,000 Dong.

In the morning I would make my way to Bach Ma.


Here is an appropriate Metallica song, Where-ever I May Roam ("Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond, call me what you will. But I'll take my time anywhere. I'm free to speak my mind anywhere. And I'll never mind anywhere. Anywhere I roam. Where I lay my head is home")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPg8gJq_Kw


Birds seen today:
104) Greater Yellownape Woodpecker Picus flavinucha
Stripe-throated Bulbul Pycnonotus finlaysoni
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus

 

[MKinHK]

Good to see you back on the trail. And suffering for the vicarious entertainment of deskbound birders worldwide.

I have mixed memories of Vietnam. Pittas, pheasants and peafowl at Cat Tien, Pied Falconet and a pair of Yellow-throated Martin at Cuc Phuong, and being dumped in Saigon at the end of th trip by my then girlfriend. Moral of the story: ticks last longer than chicks.

Cheers
Mike

 

[Chlidonias]

Good to see you back on the trail. And suffering for the vicarious entertainment of deskbound birders worldwide.

I have mixed memories of Vietnam. Pittas, pheasants and peafowl at Cat Tien, Pied Falconet and a pair of Yellow-throated Martin at Cuc Phuong, and being dumped in Saigon at the end of th trip by my then girlfriend. Moral of the story: ticks last longer than chicks.

Cheers
Mike

ticks are better than chicks, although depends on which kind of ticks and which kind of chicks.

I wasn't really suffering anywhere on this trip, just a bit frustrated by how nothing seemed to want to come my way after the good start at Cat Tien. But it's still all good fun. Hopefully the next Vietnam trip will include a lot more suffering and a lot more monkeys!

 

[kittykat23uk]

Another enjoyable read! Looking forward to more!!

 

[dandsblair]

Enjoyable read

Enjoyable read as usual and glad you were reunited with your pack

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Fifteen: Bach Ma

Last night when I arrived in Hue I went into the Phuoc An-DMZ Hotel because it was the first hotel I saw when I got off the bus. The guy on the desk told me a single room cost 120. In Vietnam the currency has many many zeros, so in conversation people drop off the last thousand for the sake of simplicity - so 120,000 Dong (about NZ$8.50) is just said as 120. This was a good deal so I took it. In the morning I found out when going to pay that by "120" he had somehow actually meant "US$12" - which is about 265,000 Dong, over twice what I had been told! I could have made a big deal about it, but I was at the end of the trip so saving a few dollars wasn't all that important, plus the girl on reception was really nice, so I let it slide.

My destination for today was Bach Ma National Park, which is easily reachable from both Hue (40km away) and Danang (65km away). The park covers almost 40,000 hectares of forest but the only accessible part for visitors is the road up to the summit of Bach Ma itself. The French built a hill resort on top of the mountain in the early 1930s but a lot of this was destroyed in the 1950s during the Anti-French Resistance War, and the remaining buildings were left to fall apart (now there are just some stone walls here and there buried in the forest). There are some old photos on display in the summit tower showing the first tourists being carried up to the summit in sedan chairs, and hunters posing proudly with tigers and sun bears. The current park was established in 1991 and now there are a number of villas and a couple of restaurants up near the summit, as well as down at the entrance HQ.

Still in Hue in the morning, I asked the girl at reception about buses to Bach Ma. She rang the bus station and then told me the local bus was full already, then she rang a bunch of other numbers and found one of the tour operators who could take me there. It may have been an tour operator they had a deal with, I don't know. Anyway, the usual one-day tour price was 700,000 per person (about NZ$50) according to the other people in the mini-bus doing the tour, but because I was only going to the entrance HQ I paid 200,000 (about NZ$14).

The road to the summit of Bach Ma is 19km long. The first 3km are outside the park, from the highway through the village of Cau Hai to the HQ, and then from the HQ to the top is 16km. I was planning on spending two nights at one of the summit accommodations, then one at the HQ accommodation (originally I was going to be at the park for five nights, but I went to Phong Nha first instead). There's not much around the lower levels where the HQ is, but there's a trail called the Pheasant Trail at the 8.5km mark, where Crested Argus live and where Vladimir Dinets had seen a Large-antlered Muntjac so I wanted to have a look. I already knew all the accommodations were expensive, and I had heard that the food there was also expensive, so I took the precaution of buying two days worth of instant noodles in Hue. As it turned out the food there isn't particularly over-priced but I still saved a lot of money. Just as a warning though - two days of eating nothing but instant noodles does not have good effects on one's digestive sytem!!

At the HQ I arranged my stay and they also handily marked on the park map the best places to try and see Red-shanked Doucs (in the early morning or late afternoon, when there are no cars on the roads). I would be staying at the Phong Lan Villa at the 18.5km mark, which at 550,000 Dong per night (about NZ$38) was the cheapest place up there! The hotel at the HQ would be 250,000 but in the end I stayed all three nights at the summit instead. There are no motorbikes allowed in the park, except those ridden by the park staff, so if you are a backpacker the only ways to get up the top are in one of the park's overpriced mini-buses, hiring a taxi, or walking. Rather conveniently, as I was standing at the reception desk organising things a couple of Germans with a taxi turned up. They were on one of the Easy Rider tours, where tourists are taken on a motorbike tour of Vietnam - but for the Bach Ma bit they have to use a taxi. So they asked if I wanted to join their taxi to bring the cost down. With three of us we were paying 300,000 each which gives you an idea of how expensive it is!

The Phong Lan Villa is perfectly serviceable and would probably be the best place to stay if at Bach Ma because it is only half a kilometre below the summit. (Although it is definitely worth noting that if you have a tent you can also camp, which obviously largely avoids the costs). Next to the villa is the Phong Lan Chicken Restaurant, and there is 24-hour electricity (I had read the park only used generators with limited hours).

As soon as I had checked in, I headed out after birds. It was about 11.30pm by this time, so it was more to get the feel of the place than because I thought I'd see a lot at midday. Generally speaking, hill and montane forests are much easier for birding than lowland forest - it is cooler and the birds tend to be a lot more active all day long and to be more visible. Even so I still struggled here and the daily bird-lists were only short. I am really anxious to come back during a better time of year and see what I find then! From Phong Lan there's half a kilometre to the end of the road, then there's another half-kilometre (which feels like a full kilometre!) of paved walking-trail through forest to the summit, and then there's the Nature Exploration Trail which comes out back on the road at about the 17.5km mark. I spent most of my time at Bach Ma along these trails.

There were very few mosquitoes around, but quite a lot of leeches (I wore my leech socks all the time). There were lots of harvestmen on the trails too. As well as the usual pitch-black ones common all over southeast Asia there was a much larger species with a leg-span bigger than my hand. Their bodies were pale grey and the legs silvery-white but they were almost invisible against the leaf-litter until they ran, and then the light caught their legs and it looked like a shimmering across the ground. If one was moving in a patch of sunlight you could see the legs glowing from quite a distance. I had to be careful not to stand on them because they often ran across the path at my approach - or even just stopped dead right in front of my foot - and although the movement of their glittering legs made it look like they were speedy wee things they really weren't.

Walking from the villa to the end of the road on my first day I came across a good bird-wave but it was buried right back in the undergrowth so I could only see bits and pieces of bird as they darted this way and that. The only firm species I could pick out though the foliage were Striated Yuhinas (which I think made up the bulk of the wave) and a White-throated Fantail. Interestingly enough, at Mang Den the dominant bird in the waves were Mountain Fulvettas but here I only saw them a couple of times and they didn't seem common at all.

On the paved trail up to the summit I popped up a little side-trail to see if anything was there, and just over a ridge a tree-top crashed as a big primate jumped. I saw it jump again - an indeterminate shape about the size of a douc - and then it was gone. Almost had it. I didn't see any other primates at all while at Bach Ma.

On the Nature Exploration Trail a continually-calling bird took my attention for quite a while. I'm not sure what it actually was - I suck at bird calls - but it was part of a vague barely-moving but mostly-hidden bird-wave, out of which I finally managed to spy out Black-throated Laughing Thrushes and Ratchet-tailed Treepies (not to be confused with the Racket-tailed Treepies from Cat Tien). I only saw the treepies on the first day but I heard them every day at this same spot, which for anyone going there was right around the butterfly sign-board where there's a little side-trail to the ruins of a small building.

The Nature Exploration Trail is 1.2km long and easy to walk. Apart for the steep steps at the start and finish it is mostly pretty even. There are regular sign-boards about butterflies, leeches, seed dispersal, tree ferns, etc. It runs along the sides of hills through forest, so you have good vantage points of the downhill slopes. Still, I didn't see anything between the treepies and laughing thrushes until the very end when I saw a Golden-throated Barbet. I had been going to walk back along the road but decided to retrace the trail instead, which was a good idea. Back where I saw the treepies I found a Red-headed Trogon, and further on I got a glimpse of some sort of ground bird as it disappeared into the plants on the uphill edge of the trail. I put my binoculars on the spot, expecting to see a partridge or something similar, and into view hopped a Blue-rumped Pitta! It was a young bird, still with streaky head but with some blue showing up on the nape and rump. It looked about, hopped a bit further behind more plants, into view again, out of view, then hopped across the path and paused at the other side to check me out before hopping down into the undergrowth and vanishing. I like pittas because while I can hardly ever find them, when I do manage to see them they often give me good (albeit usually fairly brief) views, and that combination makes them pretty special. The Blue-rumped Pitta made the tenth pitta species I have seen in the wild.

Something that may have been even better than a pitta goes into the "almost" basket. About halfway along the trail when on the return walk (before I saw the pitta), some mid-sized mammal burst from its resting place in the plants right beside the path and catapulted away through the undergrowth and over a ridge. All I saw was a blackish blur, but going by the size and movement I'm about 70% sure it must have been an Annamite Muntjac. I kept my eyes open for the rest of my stay but I never saw another one.

Rain came through at about 4.30pm, just as I got back to the villa for my noodles, but it only lasted about half an hour. I spent the next hour wandering along the road looking out for doucs but saw only Red-whiskered Bulbuls and Striated Yuhinas, as well as a nice Red-cheeked Ground Squirrel.

As dusk neared I went back to the summit walking road. The sky had black clouds again and a fog had rolled in, so thick that another Red-cheeked Ground Squirrel on the road was barely even visible through the binoculars. After dark the fog proved so impenetrable in the forest that I couldn't see more than a few feet, the torch-beam simply reflecting back off the water droplets as a wall of light. I gave up after a bit and went back to the road but there wasn't anything there either. In the end I just went back to my room and went to sleep.



Birds seen today:
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
105) White-throated Fantail Rhipidura albicollis
106) Striated Yuhina Yuhina castaniceps
107) Black-throated Laughing Thrush Garrulax chinensis
108) Ratchet-tailed Treepie Temnurus temnurus
Golden-throated Barbet Megalaima franklinii
Red-headed Trogon Harpactes erythrocephalus
109) Blue-rumped Pitta Pitta soror
Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus

Mammals seen today:
17) Red-cheeked Ground Squirrel Dremomys rufigenis

 

[Chlidonias]

Day Sixteen: Bach Ma

I had been planning on going out spot-lighting before dawn if the weather was clear but I didn't wake up until 5am, so that was out. On the way up to the summit trails I saw two Red-cheeked Ground Squirrels on the road - they seem pretty common up here, but were usually seen only early or late when there were no tourists around. The Nature Exploration Trail was pretty quiet. I came back up the road to the villa for my breakfast noodles. There were no doucs seen, but there were Pallas' Squirrels and one of the Striped Squirrels (I'm not sure which species, either Maritime or Cambodian) and amongst the birds were White-browed Shrike-babblers, Plain Flowerpeckers, Barred Cuckoo-doves and Lesser Necklaced Laughing Thrushes.

After noodles I returned to the Nature Exploration Trail for the next three or four hours to look for Silver Pheasants. No joy on the pheasants but a Black Giant Squirrel made the fourth sciurid of the day, and unusually for a Vietnamese mammal it actually hung around long enough for me to watch it! There was also a great bird-wave with what seemed to be dozens of Golden-throated Barbets and White-browed Shrike-babblers, along with Orange-bellied Leafbirds, Grey-cheeked Warblers, Mountain Fulvettas, Black-throated Sunbirds, Great Ioras, and an unseen drumming woodpecker.

It rained from about 3.30pm to 4.15, and then I went out along the road - still no doucs, and for birds nothing but Barred Cuckoo-doves and Striated Yuhinas for the rest of the day! I walked the Nature Exploration Trail at night - it was clear with no wind or fog, but the only living things I saw were leeches, moths, fireflies and a stick insect.


Birds seen today:
White-throated Fantail Rhipidura albicollis
Golden Babbler Stachridopsis chrysaea
Red-headed Trogon Harpactes erythrocephalus
110) White-browed Shrike-babbler Pteruthius flaviscapis
Dark-necked Tailorbird Orthotomus atrogularis
Golden-throated Barbet Megalaima franklinii
111) Plain Flowerpecker Dicaeum concolor
Great Iora Aegithina lafresnayei
Mountain Fulvetta Alcippe peracensis
112) Barred Cuckoo-dove Macropygia unchall
113) Lesser Necklaced Laughing Thrush Garrulax monileger
Black-throated Laughing Thrush Garrulax chinensis
Silver-eared Mesia Leiothrix argentauris
Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus
Striated Yuhina Yuhina castaniceps
114) Orange-bellied Leafbird Chloropsis hardwickii
115) Grey-cheeked Warbler Seicercus poliogenys
Black-throated Sunbird Aethopyga saturata

Mammals seen today:
Red-cheeked Ground Squirrel Dremomys rufigenis
Pallas' (Red-bellied) Squirrel Callosciurus erythraeus
Striped Squirrel Tamiops sp.
Black Giant Squirrel Ratufa bicolor