Nam Cat Tien National Park: Bau Sau - Dao Tien

Cat Tien National Park is one of the most important sites in Vietnam. This park is actively involved in the conservation of large mammals such as Asian Elephants, Lesser One-horned Rhinoceros and Eurasian Wild Pigs. Globally, the most significant is the Lesser One-horned Rhinoceros, because the population at the park is the only known population of this species in mainland South-East Asia and the only known population of one of their sub-species in the world. However, over the last two decades, the population size and range of this species has declined, and current estimates put the population size at seven or eight individuals over an area of 6,500 ha.

Apart from the endangered species listed above, Cat Tien National Park is also a nationally important site for primate conservation, supporting populations of several primates including the Black-shanked Douc, the Northern Pig-tailed Macaque and the Yellow-cheeked Crested Gibbon.

 

Day 1: Saigon - Bau Sau

Cat Tien is one of the most important sites in Vietnam for the conservation of large mammals. Among the large mammal species that have been seen in the national park are Asian Elephants, Lesser One-horned Rhinoceros, and Eurasian Wild Pigs. Of the large mammal populations at Cat Tien National Park, the most globally significant one is that of the Lesser One-horned Rhinoceros. This is the only known population of the species in mainland South-East Asia and the only known population of one of their sub-species in the world. However, the population size and range of this species at the national park has declined over the last 2 decades, and current estimates put the population size at 7 or 8 individuals over the 6,500 ha.

Cat Tien National Park is also a nationally important site for primate conservation, supporting populations of several primates, including the Black-shanked Douc, the Northern Pig-tailed Macaque, and the Yellow-cheeked Crested Gibbon.

Bid farewell to the hustle and bustle of Saigon, you will be picked up at 08:00 to travel approximately 160km north east from Saigon to Nam Cat Tien. You will pass through large rubber plantations along the way before branching off to a small and winding track to the park. After standard lunch, you will be transferred by jeep to a forest's edge at Bau Sau (Crocodile Lake) area where you explore an approximately two and a half hour jungle trekking deep into northern part of Nam Cat Tien segment.

Bau Sau is a breeding area for a number of Siamese crocodiles that were re-introduced in 2000. Besides the challenge of rough and stony trail with full of leeches, you have another challenge of studying some difficult and odd names of spotting fauna and flora kinds in the forest. After baking potatoes over the slow fire for dinner with local people, overnight at Bau Sau local guesthouse in dense green to feel the night life of prominent wild species.

Day 2: Bau Sau - Dao Tien - Saigon

Early in the morning you witness a truly indescribable sound and scene of Bau Sau with hundreds of birds.

Trekking back to the forest's edge where the jeep takes you back to the centre. Head by boat to Dao Tien where the Endangered Primate Rescue Centre in Southern Vietnam was opened by Monkey World in 2008. The species housed at Dao Tien are golden-cheeked gibbons (Nomascus gabriellae), black-shanked douc langurs (Pygathrix nigripes), silvered langurs (Trachypithecus cristatus), and pygmy loris (Nycticebus pygmaeus).