Cuc Phuong National Park: Day 1

On Saturday morning, I awoke at 7:00 in order to get breakfast and pack for the weekend's adventures at Cuc Phuong National Park. At 8, I met Brittany, Cathy, and Meggie in front of our dorm and we boarded a Mercedes van. We then traveled for an hour and passed the time by talking to each other and getting to know our tour guide, Dong. He's 21 years old and had to drop out of a great college, Foreign Trade University, because of his eye surgery last year. We asked him if he likes his job and he replied simply, "I accept it." It ended up being the joke for the weekend. At 9:00, our van stopped at a big tourist place and we went to the bathroom and stood around while our driver got a drink and watched t.v. From 9-10:00 we continued our van travel and finally reached this huge lake with beautiful mountains protruding from its depths. We took my smaller backpack and I went with Cathy on these three-person boats (two of us and the rower). They took us to this cave and we took pictures of everything from in there. It was amazingly beautiful and I enjoyed every minute of it. We did bake in the sun a bit, though. After an hour and a half, we returned to shore and boarded the van at 11:30. We went right down the road to this really nice outdoor restaurant and had a tasty lunch of goat, pork, pumpkin soup (he told us it was monkey, in fact), and spring rolls. It was even better because the food was included in the price of the trip!

From 12:30-1:30 we were traveling in the van again. We finally reached the national park, filled out a paper to stay in the guest house, and got our rooms. I stayed with Meggie in room 209 and we immediately unpacked our meager collection of belongings and headed out to meet Dong. We all walked a bit down the road to the Primate Rescue Center. We saw a bunch of monkeys in cages and took lots of pictures. Our tour guide from the rescue center told us their species names and some information about the monkeys' family life and habitat. We were also taken by the semi-natural habitat where the other monkeys can still live in trees in a huge fenced-in area. I was wondering if something can be semi-natural, since it seems to me that "natural" is binary. Either it's natural or it isn't.

Anyways, we stayed at the Primate Rescue Center from 2-3:00 pm and then walked to the visitor's center for the park. On the walk, we found out that there is no longer a turtle conservation center there anymore. It was pretty disappointing but we made sure to mark that down on the feedback sheet for the travel agency we used. The visitor's center was all about education and conservation and it was pretty interesting.

At 3:30 we all went back to the front of our guest house in order to inquire about places to swim in the vicinity. We were told the swimming pool was ten kilometers away and then Dong took us on a walk instead. The walk ended up being a pretty steep hike on slippery rocks and bricks up to this observation tower. By the time we all made it up to the top and took pictures, it started to pour down rain. We were pretty scared since it was slippery on the way up the mountain and went down from the peak practically on all fours. We returned to the rooms at 4:15 pm and my only pair of mesh shorts, sneakers, backpack, and sports bra were soaked. I designed an ingenious drying rack and Meggie helped me put it together. This involved pushing our armoire closer to the air conditioning (which was mounted high up on one wall) and placing a chair on the armoire. It allowed the air conditioning to blow straight onto the wet clothes and as a result my mesh shorts were dry in no time. I sat around in my pajamas, read my book, and then napped from 4:45-5:45.

Our group went down to the restaurant in front of our guest house and had dinner at 6:30. It was pretty much the same as lunch--goat, pork, spring rolls, potato soup, and of course rice. By 7:00, we were back in our rooms preparing for our night spotting adventure. The adventure began in front of the guest house at 7:30 pm when we met our temporary tour guide. His name was Dinh and he was 35 years old. We enjoyed him immensely because he was just as excited as were to be out in the middle of the jungle at night with headlamps and spotlights. We rode for 20 minutes in our van into the middle of the jungle before getting out and exploring with Dinh. We found lots of insects and they were all at least three times the size they should be. We saw giant crickets, earthworms, roaches, and grasshoppers and one red-eyed animal that was most likely a lorid, or a small monkey with huge eyes. A chameleon was also spotted before we got back onto the van at 9:00. We got back to our rooms at 9:30 and by 10:15 I was reading in bed for a bit before sleeping really well.