An exciting day in Cuc Phurong National Park

Today we had the sixth largest national park in Vietnam on our itinerary. It is located 46 km from the provincial city of Ninh Binh. Here is the most important information: Tropical rainforest is the dominant vegetation type, and yes, I walked through it for hours!!!!

After a delicious breakfast, we went down to the lobby. We wanted to inquire about our train because we were supposed to take the night train to Hue tonight. Unfortunately, the typhoon damaged the railway network, so the trains are not running at the moment. Our hotel manager arranged cheap flights to Hoi An for us tomorrow. We will see if we can make a detour to Hue from there.

Now, let's get back to our tour today. Our friendly driver was available again and drove us to the amazing national park (distance from the hotel: 49 km). When we arrived at the park, we had to drive another 20 km to our first highlight. Finally, the driver got out of the car with us and pointed to an information board with some attractions that we could visit, one of which was 3 km away!

So, we started walking in the direction of the arrow, and after a few meters, I shrugged my shoulders and turned to Daniela, asking her, 'Is this the jungle?'... 'No Anke, if you had grown up in the beautiful green Ruhr area like me, you would know that we are in a forest! 😂'

Well, there are spiders and strange creatures here, and anyone who knows me knows how much I love this kind of environment....:-((((! The spiders had thin legs, no hair on them, but a body as thick as a pea, and their legs were at least 10 centimeters long....I'm getting goosebumps now :-()()(()()....Daniela told me that they are more afraid of me, so I can continue walking normally. After a while, I got used to them, and then you forget about them. Finally, after 1 km, I could start enjoying the nature around me. The vegetation is simply amazing, and the sounds coming from the rainforest were fascinating. We wanted to visit a cave and a 1000-year-old tree. Guys, you can't imagine it, it was so oppressively hot, we were sweating so much, and what did we have to do again???? Of course, this time we had to climb what felt like a million rocky, crooked stone stairs....ugh....!!! Don't think that we reached the cave quickly, no, it took forever because we had to keep going up and then there were tree trunks on the narrow path or the steps were jagged, so we had to be really careful where we stepped. That made it even more exhausting than it already was. We finally reached the cave and we could have gone further inside. Since there was no lighting, we only looked at the entrance of the cave and a bit more, but then we got out....!

Afterwards, we followed the arrow towards the old tree, and it was an incredibly strenuous tour to get there. When we arrived at the tree, we had already walked 3 km, and I said to Daniela, 'I thought we would be back at the car after 3 km', and she thought the same....! I don't want to sugarcoat anything, so I can tell you that I WAS EXHAUSTED!!!! Behind the tree, there was a sign that said 'STOP - EASY TO GET LOST'! Well, I found it spooky. We followed the sign 'Way back', and I was hopeful that we would soon be back at the beautiful parking lot. As they say, life is not a pony farm, and yes, I can confirm that because the next 4 km were by far the worst of my life. The path got narrower, the steps got smaller or higher, it became slippery, and it was so incredibly hot, and the humidity was a nightmare. Did I mention that at the beginning of the hike, the driver gave me an umbrella, and I was so grateful because I used it the whole time to protect myself from whatever wanted to eat me....;-))))))). Lost in my thoughts, we descended countless steps, and when I was about to take another step, a thin snake moved on the step where I was about to step.....well, you can probably imagine how I screamed and ran down several steps like Rumpelstiltskin. Daniela burst into laughter behind me and said, oh, it was cute, it went straight into the undergrowth:-())()(). It might have been cute, but it surprised me so much...no, no, no. Then we encountered 3 teenagers, and I asked them how much longer it would take to the parking lot, and they laughed and said 45 minutes. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT, Daniela, I'm going to die here.... Panic started to build up in me because we hardly had anything to drink anymore, and then another 45 minutes, horrible. It actually took almost 45 minutes to get to the parking lot, and it was still very strenuous. It was such a relief for me when I saw the roofs of the buses, yippi, we're not going to die after all!!!!!!!!

We quickly refreshed ourselves and went to the driver, and I thought we were going to the primate center, well, Anke, absolutely wrong thought. He stopped at a small parking lot and pointed to an information board with a CAVE, and I almost cried and said to Daniela, 'make him understand that I'm not going to get out here anymore, I want to see the monkeys'.... Nooooo, that's not gonna happen, we had to get out and he laughed and said, 'cave, cave'.... I looked at the board and it said Cave 300 meters! Well, you can manage 300 meters. But it was another 300 meters with stairs going uphill, I almost cried, what a mess! Daniela took it with humor, she was so kind and walked ahead and shouted down from above that it wasn't far. The cave was even bigger than the ones we had already seen, and Daniela actually went inside the cave with two other guys. In the meantime, I had already returned to the car, I didn't feel like being in the rainforest anymore! When she came back to the car, she just said, 'That was awesome. There were bats hanging on the wall, a huge fat spider, and a big beetle, and the cave had several more passages! Sounds fantastic...smile!

So, we made it clear to the driver that he should take us to the monkeys!!!!! And he did! Here at the primate center, we could see monkeys that are endangered and they are trying to reintroduce them into a special area. It was interesting, and we also saw the same thing for turtles. As a souvenir, I got a monkey shirt for myself :-))). We were exhausted and didn't want any more information or trekking, just go home to the hotel and have a delicious meal.

And so this very, very exhausting and exciting day in Ninh Binh is slowly coming to an end.

Many greetings from us!!!!