Into the woods
Trip Start
Jul 15, 2007
1
131
195
Trip End
Jul 16, 2008
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Cuc Phuong,
Vietnam
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Afer Mai Chau we spent a day visiting Vietnam's first National Park in Cuc Phuong. We stayed by ourselves in an imposing villa about one mile from the Visitor Center. It was a large masonry building with a balcony in a clearing in the forest, right off the road, painted a subtle shade of yellow.
We speculated about what it was before the Communist takeover in the mid-1950s, after years of war against the French. Perhaps it was the residence of a 19th century French provincial governor, and later the home of a lonely Indochinese widow a la Catherine Deneuve? What romantic escapades took place here? What colonial revelries? Perhaps a bittersweet parting between a beautiful Vietnamese mistress and a brave French soldier, off to join his unit at Dien Bien Phu?
It turns out the building was built in 2001 by the Russians
Big tree
. The musty smell and the cracked walls are a legacy of nothing more interesting than shoddy construction. So much for our post-colonial fantasies.After lunch we saw the Primate Rescue Center. The various monkeys are very different. The langurs are, well, languorous. They mostly sit there with their long tails hanging, looking around. The gibbons, on the other hand, swing constantly around their cages like ballroom dancers on crystal meth. It made me tired just watching them.
After seeing the primates, we drove 20km into the park, and then walked 5 km through the woods to the Big Tree, a largish 600-year-old tree. (Not to be confused with the Ancient Tree, a 1000-year-old specimen that required a longer and more challenging hike.) The tree had big roots and a tall white trunk. In addition to Canh, we had a park ranger to show us the sights.
"You have seen a tree this big before?" We explained about the coastal redwoods in Muir Woods and Yosemite. Undeterred, our guide tried again. "This tree is very old. More than 600 years." We explained about the sequoias in Mariposa Grove, many more than 2,000 years old. Our ranger guide took it all in stride, and showed us a plant that is boiled up by the local hill tribes to use as a poultice for skin infections.
