January 13th, 2023

Well today (January 11) was a lot.

We decided to do the hike to crocodile lake, so we woke up early and ate breakfast, then took the ferry across the river to the national park with our bikes. To do the hike, we had to bike 10 km through the jungle path to the start of the crocodile lake hike, then it was about 5 km to crocodile lake.

There is a special tour in the park that only four people per day can do, and you have to start at 530am, where a guide tracks the gibbons (monkeys) and takes you to them. It was booked solid and very expensive, so there was no chance we could do that. When we started hiking to crocodile lake, we could hear crashing in the trees above us. We stopped and stood still where there was a bit of a clearing, and could see fifteen or so Gibbons in the trees above us having their breakfast and leaping between the trees!!! It was incredibly lucky and they were so cute. As we continued hiking, we saw two more monkey families on our way to crocodile lake. I could have stood around all day watching them, but we had to be back and riding our bikes by 1pm if we wanted to make it to our hotel (80 km away) before dark.

We kept walking and I saw a snake. I flagged it to Max but he just kept walking and didn’t seem to hear me! Then I remembered that snakes are not exactly his favourite, and he was definitely ignoring me on purpose haha. Finally, we saw a massive tree named Dong that had roots higher than our heads - super super cool.

The forest was generally very damp. We stopped at another location to watch the monkeys, and when we started going again i felt a pinch on my ankle. I checked out of confusion, and saw multiple land leeches climbing up my shoes and two already on my ankle. Needless to say, I started freaking out and trying to flick them off, and then I saw more crawling along the forest floor toward me and just started running. Max was trying to run and check his own ankles too, but luckily he had longer socks on. We kept running until we made it to a boardwalk for crocodile lake which was nice and dry, where we could shake out our pants/socks/shoes of leeches and remove the last few from our legs. I had a ring of leech attack blood circles around my ankles right above my socks! I was so happy we had made it to crocodile lake.

Once we were there, we saw many cool birds and THREE crocodiles as well as a lot of splashing that may have been a crocodile attack. We sat and watched the beautiful lake with our snacks, and it was so nice and leech-free. We were the only ones there! A park ranger came by and announced there was an extra fee for being there of 250,000 vnd per person - we calculated we could just afford it and pay for our hotel, but it cleaned us out of cash which is the only way to pay for anything in vietnam it seems. He lent us some binoculars. I loved watching the crocodiles glide around the lake, but we were cognizant that we had to get back and bike 80 km.

We ran almost the entire 5 km back to our bikes to avoid the land leeches, but we still got three each. At that point, it was midday, very hot (30 degrees and humid) and there were no more monkeys - the entire jungle seemed to have gone to sleep. We were so sweaty, and we biked back to the ferry in a hurry. When we got back to our hotel we took a cold shower to cool down, checked out of the hotel with almost no money left (160,000 vnd or about $8 CAD) and started biking in the absolutely asphyxiating heat. We biked about halfway along the QL20 (basically another highway, unlike our beautiful DT725 back road), then stopped to take out more cash and get water. The ATM lineup took 45 min, so had to bike the last 47 km in 2 hours to avoid biking in the dark. There was absolutely crazy traffic, honking, etc. Max was ahead forcing his way through the throngs of motorcycles and cars, and luckily I could always see tall Max’s fruit jersey on his tall bike in the sea of motorcycles. Signals are absolutely meaningless here, and most motorcycles just drive along with their signals on because they have forgotten to turn them off. I basically signal for Max’s benefit, because I am usually navigating and want to give him advance notice that we are making a turn, and Max signals to “take the lane” when he is avoiding an obstacle, which is terrifying. I told him we are going to get beat up and he said “I am by far the biggest person here!” I had to point out that we are also the only non-motorized vehicles on the road, even if most of the motorcycles sound like old lawnmowers.

We were flagging from a big day, but we finally made it to our hotel in excellent time. We were both shattered, but we had another cold shower and went to eat an enormous meal. I think we scare people here by how much we eat. We couldn’t understand the menu so we ordered two of something, and the lady freaked out and got her phone to translate from Vietnamese to English and let us know that we had basically ordered a “burnt rice” appetizer… twice. She helped us adjust our order, and the food was very good.

We made it to the ferry terminal that would take us across the Dong Nai to HCMC, and I was just buzzing. We were entering the biggest city I have ever been in, and we had to navigate through to our hotel in the middle of downtown. We sprinted off the ramp up the ferry with all the motorcycles, and the way the road is designed we actually had a lane of our own with just motorcycles, which was amazing.

We made it most of the way to the hotel without issue, but then our phone started dying. I put the charge block in my fanny pack and wrapped the cable over my shoulder so we could ride and charge. We have to follow the driving directions because there is no such thing as “cycling directions” in Vietnam, and the walking directions usually get us into serious trouble going the wrong way on one way roads. But, in this case, the driving directions tried to take us through a tunnel under the river where bikes are not allowed, and a police officer flagged us down and turned us back. A setback, but he told us we could take the next bridge. We got to our hotel which was Egyptian themed (lol) and showered then went hunting for some food.

The next morning we slept in then walked to the “book street” to get Max some new books. We got coffees and generally relaxed. We saw the note dame cathedral, the post office and the reunification palace, which all had very cool architecture. Then we went to the war remnants museum, which was incredible but so sad. There was a lot of information about the torture methods used on the prisoners, and the chemical warfare used by the USA - they sprayed things like “agent orange” from planes over the countryside which killed all the forests, poisoned the water, chemically burned people, and caused generations of horrifying birth defects. We were very somber when we left, and tried to go hang out in a park, but it was closed as they prepare for the vietnamese new year. I am sad we will just miss the celebrations by about a week! Oh well - for tourists, it will basically be a giant party, but we would generally have no clue what was going on.

We were still pretty tired, and decided to go see a movie! The new avatar movie is in English here, with vietnamese subtitles. The animation was so beautiful, and we got some weird cheesy popcorn to go with it. After the movie, we headed to a rooftop bar to see the whole city (it was sort of a weed bar), then picked up water and snacks for our bus ride tomorrow. Overall, another awesome day exploring Ho Chi Minh and I am so sad it’s our last day in Vietnam! Headed to Cambodia tomorrow!