Cat Tien National Park

Dalat would be my base city for visiting Cat Tien National park. The park is 175km from Dalat on the road to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC/Saigon). There was nothing I wanted to see in HCMC and I figured why go there. Cat Tien would be as far south as I would go because I still had to go far north to fly home from Hanoi. I had a super nice deluxe bus to the park. The nicest bus by far that I had been on for this trip, hell, almost anywhere for that matter. It took 4 hours to reach the road to the park. From here I had to bargain hard with a moto driver to take me the remaining 25km to the park. I walked away from there ridiculous prices. They followed me and eventually went for my price, which was even a little more, I later learned than it should have been. I then had to cross a river to get to the actual park. The headquarters were right on the other side. I set up my tent in a large, flat field with unfortunately no privacy but still I was happy to be camping.

Cat Tien is an important park in Vietnam, harbouring many rare and endangered animals and forest. The park is under heavy pressure though from hunting and habitat loss. I met some other travellers here. After dinner a couple joined me for a night walk. I had thought about doing the night drive but they let you walk the same road for free, so I thought why not try that first. We saw eyeshine from at least 3 animals. My headlamp has a wide range which is good for spotting animals, even at a distance, but it's not good for zooming in on the animal to actually see what it is!
I only deteremined what one animal was. That was because it was a bird and pratically flew out in front of us. We walked for 2 hours. I had low expectations so I was pleasantly surprised that we did see at least 3 animals, even if we couldn't tell what they were.