UnPHOgettable Vietnam: Cat Tien National Park

March 19 - 21

Cat Tien is not a very big tourist destination; infact, no other backpackers had even heard of it. But we were keen to spend a few days doing outdoorsy-naturey things!

The journey from Ho Chi Minh to Cat Tien involved a 3.5hr bus and a 40 minute motor bike ride. My first motor bike ride over here - and only my second time ever. I was nervous (clinging for dear life into the little old Vietnamese man) but it was a scenic drive on fairly quiet roads, so it was actually quite nice in the end.

Our hostel was amazing. We had a private room with a double bed each and a balcony that looked over the river. Luxury! And all that for only $7 a night!

We got on a boat over to the national park and headed straight to the bear rescue centre. I actually found this place very disappointing and quite depressing. The animals there have been taken out of horrible situations. Most were held in captivity, with tubes constantly sucking the bile out of their stomach to be used as an "alternative medicine." At the rescue centre they have moon bears and sun bears. The moon bears are rotated between a big open enclosure and a small cage. The ones in the cages looked miserable. The sun bears and aggressive and therefore have to be kept away from each other. So they're each kept in a tiny cage and then there is one big enclosure that they rotate through each day. I understand that this is a much better situation than they were in before, and that they are not ready to go back into the wild, but it still seems cruel.

They also had gibbons. Again, they were in very small cages. And the ones that were released to the wild seem to mostly spend their days nearby the sanctuary searching for food.

For the rest of the afternoon, we hiked around the park.

The trails are pretty. We spotted some enourmous trees and found some rapids while we were exploring.

Exhausted after all our walking, we had an early night, watching movies in bed.

We'd been told the primate sanctuary was a must-do, but after our experience with the bears we were very hesitant. We did a lot of googling and decided it was still worth a trip. And thankfully, it really was worth it. This place was amazing!

They rescue gibbons and pygmy loris and rehabilitate them so that they can go back out into the wild. Most of these animals had been kept as pets, often spending years in a small cage. So it often takes a lot of adjusting before they can go out into the wild. Some of them have diseases (mostly from human interaction) that mean they won't ever be able to go out into the wild again.

The gibbons have two phases. In the first phase they are in enclosures (much bigger than the ones at the bear rescue centre) learning how to "be a monkey again" - climbing and swinging about. Then in the second phase they are put into large fenced off areas. These range from half a hectare to 20 hectares. If the monkies are self-sufficient (i.e they find food in the trees, rather than coming to the ground) then they can be released into the wild. The rangers then track the gibbons for a while after their release to make sure they've adjusted.