on the road to Da Lat

Vietnam seems to be THE place to go birding in Southeast Asia over the last twelve months – with good reason. It’s safe, cheap, easy to get around, the people are exceptionally personable and best of all the birding is great (if at times rather slow!). On this trip four of us (Susan Myers, Stuart Dashper, Scott Chandry and Cecilia Chandry) spent a total of 19 days birding in four localities – the Da Lat Plateau, Cat Tien National Park, Cuc Phuong National Park and Tam Dao. We split up for the last three days; Stuart and I went to Sa Pa while Scott and Cecilia went to Cat Ba. As seems to be usual for us our timing was a bit off and we caught the end of the season, making birding in a couple of spots – notably Cuc Phuong and Tam Dao – even slower than usual. We did record almost 280 species of bird, though. If you have the option however it seems that mid-December to April is best. I don’t want to go over ground that has already been covered by a couple of excellent trip reports so this is a brief report of our trip (except for the slightly longer bit on Sa Pa).

References

As mentioned above a number of people have generously made their excellent trip reports available over the web. I found Aidan Kelly’s and John Hornbuckle’s reports to be very helpful, as was David Fischer’s report on Da Lat and Cat Tien. We also used a copy of Brian Gee’s report which I found to be principally useful for its excellent maps (that said, the map of Lang Bian seems to be either incorrect or out of date – he shows the track to MLB to be the main road whereas it is in fact a turn off). In addition, we used the usual references – King and Lekagul and Round. See Hornbuckle and Kelly for more details of various articles and so on. All these reports are available on Urs Geiser's trip reports page ñ

Sites visited – just some short notes on our experiences

Da Lat Plateau

We visited the two main sites; there are probably other areas of interest if you have a bit more time. (I have heard that the Provincial government prohibits access to some of the best forest). David Fischer recommends the Da Tan La Waterfall.

We dipped on the crocias – not even a peep. At Ho Tuyen Lam mixed flocks were very hard to come by and we didn’t even hear the bird. We did find Grey-headed Parrotbill, Yellow-billed Nuthatch, Yellow-breasted Magpie, Vietnamese Greenfinch, Rusty-naped Pitta, Black-hooded Laughing-thrush and White-cheeked Laughing-thrush – all of which we had excellent looks at. That Cutia managed to escape our attention yet again though!

Mount Lang Bian was a different story. We were not overly impressed at missing the turn-off to the mountain and walking many kilometres only to find ourselves at some poxy lookout overlooking crummy farmland. Be warned this an exception to Brian’s otherwise brilliant maps in that it is rather ambiguous. Brian’s depiction of a turn off to the left with a question mark is in fact the main road. You need to keep a look out for a path off to the right (not a continuation of the road at all). This track has not been jeepable as the map suggests, for a very long time! Many Vietnamese were making their way to the poxy lookout along the question mark road and I feel sure that things must have changed considerably since Brian drew his map in 1996. We missed seeing the Collared Laughing-thrush probably because we were just too late. Better luck next time! ñ

Cat Tien National Park

For us this was easily the best place we visited. This park is great and I wish we’d given ourselves more time here. I’d go back to Vietnam just for Cat Tien. The bungalows are extremely good for such a seldom visited park and the food was great, considering everything! The important thing of course is that the birding is the best we found in Vietnam. Highlights were Germain’s Peacock-pheasant, Green Peafowl, Siamese Fireback, Bar-bellied, Blue-rumped and Blue-winged Pittas, Pied Kingfisher, Woolly-necked Stork etc. We hired a jeep for a reasonable price to take us to Dac Lua and then to Crocodile Lake. We stayed overnight in the watchtower, which I highly recommend (we took a tent which was a good move given the number of mozzies). Our guide cooked an excellent meal for us. We also hired a boat to take us down the Dong Nai River from the headquarters one morning. The driver was excellent and stopped whenever we saw something. This cost the equivalent of $AUD20 for four of us. I have two words of warning about Cat Tien, however – 1) it’s incredibly hard to find so make sure you have a driver who has been there before. If you ask for directions to Cat Tien the locals will tell you how to get to a town called Cat Tien which is nowhere near where you want to be! A three hour drive from Da Lat took us 9 hours!! 2) I’ve been to many leech infested places now but Cat Tien takes the cake! I’ve never seen so many. Eventually we succumbed and hired some leech-proof socks. After I emptied one shoe of 20+ leeches I didn’t feel quite so embarrassed however….. ñ

Cuc Phuong

We found Cuc Phuong to be hard work due to the fact that there were no birds! No, it wasn’t quite that bad but they did seem not only scarce but scared. As we found in all the areas we visited, hunting of birds and other wildlife as well as harvesting of flora is rampant. A gunshot was heard no less than a kilometre away from us at Bong Substation. Best birds here were Ratchet-tailed Treepie, a male and female Bar-bellied Pitta foraging briefly on the road, Red-collared Woodpecker, Collared Scops-owl, lots of Green-eared Barbets, Orange-headed Thrush and Limestone Wren-babbler. I recommend the Primate Research Centre as your best chance to ever see any of Vietnam’s unique and highly endangered leaf-monkeys. ñ

Tam Dao

Unfortunately, as far as we could see Tam Dao is a complete basket case. The birds take one look at you and piss right off, there are people everywhere harvesting every type of natural product and every restaurant in town (of which there are quite a few) has a number of endangered species on the menu. We saw plenty of people eating them, too!

To be honest, we found Tam Dao pretty depressing. On one day we only managed to record about ten species – despite being out all day. Even given that our visit was just out of season this seems a bit drastic. We heard but could not track down the Grey Laughing-thrush. Highlights were Short-tailed Parrotbill, Slaty-bellied Tesia, Black-throated Laughing-thrush, Black-chinned Yuhina and Chestnut Bulbul. ñ

Sa Pa

Sa Pa is a small market town located in the north-west corner of Vietnam almost on the Chinese border. It’s been in existence for a long time as a market town for the local hill tribes of which there are many – Black H’mong, Red H’mong, Flower H’mong, Dao, Giay and so on. Every Saturday these people come in from the surrounding areas to sell their goods at the Sunday market. This has recently become a tourist attraction for Vietnamese and foreign tourists alike. From what I can gather very few birders have visited Sa Pa as yet. This is bound to change, as the area is easy to get to and is absolutely brilliant. We took the overnight train from Ha Noi to Lao Cai on the Chinese border at a cost of about $AUD20 each, then we caught the regular bus for backpackers to Sa Pa ($AUD2.50). This takes about an hour. The train is great but not for the faint-hearted – six to a small cabin, very basic toilets, lots of hawkers – the usual stuff. There are only hard berths on the train so my advice is to take a thermarest – it saved our backs. We stayed at the very atmospheric Auberge Hotel, which is highly recommended at $US10 a night for a twin room. There are plenty of other options including a very flash and expensive-looking new place called the Victoria Hotel.

The only problem with Sa Pa is the weather. The elevation of the town itself is 2000m. Nearby Mount Fan Si Pan is the highest peak in Vietnam at 3143m. We were plagued by bad weather during our short stay, apparently September through December is the best time to visit. We managed two short sessions of birding up at the Pass just below Fan Si Pan and a full day’s birding at the Ham Rong Botanic Gardens just above the town. To get to the Pass we hired a Minsk motorbike one day and a jeep on another when the weather was really average. The motorbike cost us $US7 a day while the jeep was $US12. The Pass can be found by following the road out of Sa Pa to Lai Chau, after about half an hour you’ll see a pull off on the left where a permanent congregation of Black H’mong people will charge you about 50 cents to park the bike. On the way up we saw White-browed Laughing-thrush, Collared and Crested Finchbill and Whiskered Yuhina. From there follow a well-worn path down the hill to an open area and small swamp then in to the forest. There are numerous paths created by the local tribes-people who harvest the bamboo and timber from the Hoang Lien Son Nature Reserve. Careful not to get lost! This forest was fantastic for birds and really warranted more time than we were able to give it. Highlights were Red-billed Leiothrix, Golden-breasted Fulvetta, Red-tailed Minla, Yellow-cheeked Tit, Orange-flanked Bush-robin, Green-tailed Sunbird and so on. We would have seen a lot more given a bit more time of course.

On the last day (due to bad weather, Doxycycline-induced illness and end-of-trip exhaustion) we limited our activities to the fabulous Ham Rong gardens. Set on the hillside overlooking the town amongst the limestone castes we really enjoyed the wonderfully atmospheric setting. There is a half-wild, half-cultivated atmosphere and surprisingly interesting birdlife. We found Spot-breasted Parrotbill, Chestnut-bellied Rock-thrush, White-browed Fulvetta, Spectacled Barwing, Brown-breasted Bulbul, White-browed Laughing-thrush, Black-headed Greenfinch, Golden-spectacled Warbler and best of all two Black-browed Parrotbills* that are not supposed to be there! ñ

the road to Sa Pa

* This is the second record of the species for Vietnam (per Jonathon Eames, Birdlife International Vietnam).

Vietnam Bird & Mammal List