It's a Jungle Out There...and it Bites!

           Thought it might be time for an update. Today I find myself on another train voyage back down the coast of Vietnam. Luckily I got on the express train so it is only about 17-19 hours (time is rather vague here) vs 21+ hours. So far so good. My cabin mate is a really nice Vietnamese girl who knows English and happens to be getting off at my stop AND is willing to help me figure out a taxi for when I arrive. I also happen to have two friends in my bed today – a cockroach and a mouse (or small rat?). What luck!

            This trip concludes the solo part of my research and while it was rewarding, it was also very challenging and frustrating. To be honest I am happy it is done and probably wouldn’t try that again. On the upside I visited 15 caves in the northern reaches of the country. They included everything from wild caves, to sinking streams, to over-exploited tourist caves, to caves with rivers through them and tourist caves that just opened. 

Karst Landscape I was working in

=P

Underground river cave 

Totally awesome pool formation inside a cave.

Second river cave.

Working hard.

Bats

Huge cave spider

My original intent with the project was to study how caves were managed in Vietnam in three different parks and then offer some suggestions to help preserve these resources. Unfortunately, to conduct any interviews with park officials and send in a report at the end I needed a permission letter that got caught in the Vietnamese government. Basically one agency said another agency in Hanoi needed to give me permission and the people in Hanoi said the first agency was responsible for that. So, I was stuck! I still went out with my guide though and visited these places. Unfortunately, I was also only limited to caves open to the public and therefore, unable to get into some of the more remote caves I was hoping to see (including the largest cave in the world, Son Doong). I did get to see a branch off of the Son Doong cave system but sadly not the actual cave =(.  

Entering Phong Nha-Ke Bang Park via a 50 km motorbike ride.

River ride into Phong Nha Cave

Phong Nha Cave

Phong Nha Cave

60m high room in Vom cave (part of cave system including Son Doong0

Research =)

Hard to tell but this was about 100-120 ft tall.

Totally awesome formation

Ride through Phong Nha Park

 Also, working with a Vietnamese guide put my schedule on Vietnamese time which got to be quite frustrating when looking at it from an American viewpoint.

My guide and I inside a cave

Basically you don’t work much at all. You take 2 hour meals and progress is slow at best. I learned though the resisting the pace only created tension so the simple solution was to embrace it and take a little more time to enjoy the scenery. My guide was also an avid birder/naturalist so I learned about edible plants, birds and butterflies in the process too. One afternoon apparently we had nothing to do in terms of caves so I suggested we take a hike in the park. I asked for something difficult, challenging, adventurous, etc. Well I got just that. Now, I will be the first to admit my mistake in wearing chaco sandals into the jungle. Granted my closed toed shoes were soaked from the caving in the morning. What I did not know was the forest floor is actually covered in leeches. These little guys have a great adaptation of sensing any vibrations nearby and running to hop on. Now this means that as you walk and stop for any small amount of time you will literally watch leeches race up your feet. As soon as they are in contact with skin they are latched on. Had I been smart and had on shoes and pants this would have not been a big deal. However, considering my lovely choice of footwear I had the joy of pulling off 20+ leeches from my poor feet and legs (eventually I stopped counting).

Leech 1 - Actually occurred in the cave pre-chaco hike

The damage

Also, it started to rain which caused the leeches up in the trees (different species) to drop down onto unsuspecting Meg’s walking beneath them. Apparently this only happens in the rain. The hike itself was to a huge tree that was awesome. It went up and down across karst “peaks” (very short) made of slippery boulders of limestone carved into knife-like points. These algae covered rocks plus a little rain proved quite slippery and I also managed to get myself a pretty decent slice on my foot (ah the chacos). The way I look at it that just made the leeches’ job a little easier – basically I had a nice big blood picnic just waiting on my foot. Great memories!

Butterfly in the Park

Huge Tree I Hiked to See

Bear Scratch in the Tree Along the Trail

The last issue I want to address is that traveling alone in a culture I barely understood surrounded by a people I literally could not communicate with proved to be more difficult personally than I expected. Considering I was off the typical foreign tourist path I pretty much had just me. Slightly unnerving and definitely a challenge. I found myself trying to fit my American worldview into a Vietnamese system. The result was a sense of fear and insecurity in how the world around me that I was experiencing simply defied all that my western constructs had taught me to know and trust. The result was simply an irrational fear in my surroundings due to the unfamiliarity and resistance to trust the unknown. Without someone at my side with a similar worldview (Ie my American classmates or any western traveler) this uncertainty proved to be quite an unnerving anxiety and stress regardless of whether my current situation was actually perfectly safe or not. It was a feeling quite unlike I had ever felt before. Great learning experience, probably won’t repeat any time soon!

Now, I’m traveling back to Thap Cham where the journey all began a couple of weeks ago to meet a few classmates and try to figure out what I can make of the mess of data I collected =p. During my stay I plan to enjoy the beach a little and perhaps take a couple of day trips into the mountains!

Home in 19 days =).