LaughingDove Goes Travelling - SE Asia and Australia

Vision said:
Interesting! When I still lived there (2006-2009) I remember a crocodile at Sungei Buloh (or in Singapore in general) being quite a big deal, with signs around the visitor centre and boardwalks specifically saying a crocodile had been spotted recently etc... How many individuals did you see? I wonder if there are actually more crocodiles now than there were then, or if they just seemed like a bigger deal because I lived there as a child. :p
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When I first starting going to Asia (which was 2006 - I probably saw you there) there was only one crocodile at Sungai Buloh. The numbers have been increasing since then, but I don't know if it's from breeding on site or colonisation from elsewhere.
 
Brum said:
How did you do that? I tried to type that the other day and ZooChat censored it!
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The ZooChat sensor obviously realises it was just referring to people in the financial industry, not a crude insult at all.

Or more likely, all of these posts are typed elsewhere and then pasted in and the censor doesn't notice.

Actually, I think it's because they're just censoring you personally. Which is probably a wise move.
 
Vision said:
Interesting! When I still lived there (2006-2009) I remember a crocodile at Sungei Buloh (or in Singapore in general) being quite a big deal, with signs around the visitor centre and boardwalks specifically saying a crocodile had been spotted recently etc... How many individuals did you see? I wonder if there are actually more crocodiles now than there were then, or if they just seemed like a bigger deal because I lived there as a child. :p
I think seeing snakes is indeed not uncommon in Sungei Buloh, as I vividly remember seeing Oriental whip snakes there at least three times, when I didn't even really know how to look for snakes... Same goes for the Wagler's pit vipers at Bukit Timah, I remember those well and have a few pictures from back then too.
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I saw either four or five crocodiles (depending on whether one had moved or was a different one).
 
And Now I'm in Vietnam!

It's a shame to leave my pod, I've gotten quite used to it after seven nights in it. I think it is quite a good option as a place to stay in Singapore because unless you're spending a lot of money there's no way you'll get a room in a good location and the pod is quite nice and no more expensive than a mid-level price dorm.


At 1:50 PM my flight was a good time and with no real justification for a Grab or taxi, I took the MRT to the airport. I don't know of these are at all the above ground MRTs (which are all raised as skytrains) but at EXPO where I changed trains, there were lots of anti-suicide signs telling people to 'be responsible' which I found a bit odd. Suicide is actually illegal in Singapore.


At check in Jetstar uses automatic machines which is no problem, but they had a member of staff at each machine which was really irritating because they then 'helped' in an unnecessary and annoying way. Either have a normal check in counter, or let me do it!


For once I was at Changi Airport at a reasonable time of day and with enough time before my flight so I decided to visit the butterfly garden. Every airport has to have a butterfly garden! The butterfly garden is actually airside (i.e. after immigration in the gate area) and is in Terminal 3. My flight was in Terminal 1, but a quick airside skytrain got me to the other terminal. It was a fairly typical butterfly garden, nothing much to say about it, but it is inside an airport. Apparently the only butterfly garden in an airport.


So it's everyone's favourite Jetstar again! I may have briefly suggested my intense hatred for Jetstar in the past. I'm not sure why I keep flying with them, I'm actually on Jetstar again from Ho Chi Minh City back to Bangkok! But I mainly hate Jetstar Australia and Jetstar Asia which is based out of Singapore and what I flew today and Jetstar Pacific which is what I will be flying to Bangkok, are separate airlines. Owned by the same company of course, it's all part of the same group as Quantas, but airlines that operate independently. My main issue with Jetstar Australia is actually that it's terrible value for money and you get a budget airline but pay through the nose for it and they can only get away with it because they have monopolies on routes in Australia. Jetstar Asia could never do that of course and Singapore-HCMC and HCMC-Bangkok are both hugely competition routes with probably, or at least close to double-digits of carriers on each route so if Jetstar wasn't cheap, everyone would fly Scoot or AirAsia or VietJet or get decent service on a full fare airline like Singapore Airlines or Vietnam Airlines.


I went to have lunch in the same Subway restaurant as I ate at when I was transiting through Singapore on my way from Kota Kinabalu to Darwin. I had the same thing because I always do at Subway and sat at the same table because it's got the best view of the runway and apron! It feels like that was so long ago now, and all of Malaysia happened before that!


The trip is heading towards its end though, and now seems like a logical point to discuss the plans for the rest of it since I'm at the airport now and have time. So Vietnam is the last minute surprise country and I have a 15 day visit here. The plan is Ho Chi Minh City for two nights first with the aim of visiting the zoo and also because although normal tourist spots don't interest me and history is the one area that really doesn't hold my interest for some reason, I do like to get a 'feel' for other cities and I want to do that in HCMC. There are no birds at all in the city though because they've all been eaten or trapped, and in Vietnam there is effectively no wildlife whatsoever outside protected areas, not even common species. There is plenty of awesome and endemic wildlife in Vietnam of course, it's just more difficult to find it. After Ho Chi Minh, I will be going to Cat Tien National Park which is the main lowland rainforest spot in Vietnam, then on to Dalat which has endemic birds, and then back to Ho Chi Minh for one more night. There are obviously lots of other wildlife spots, especially for the other endemic primates, but with just 15 days this time I'm going to focus on those two locations. I will most certainly have to come back to Vietnam on a future trip, and I'd better make it soon before all the endemics go extinct...


After my Vietnam tour of HCMC-Cat Tien-Dalat-HCMC for 15 days I fly to Bangkok for 10 days. I have an Aunt in Bangkok and I can stay with her and do things in Bangkok or I could go on short trips from Bangkok. Those ten days are totally unplanned. If anyone wants to suggest Bangkok attractions or local trips, go ahead. And then on the 13th of September I fly back to Warsaw marking the end of the trip. It's still over a fifth of the whole trip left to go though so it's not over just yet. And then on the 1st of October I will moving to the UK to start university there, but that's a whole different adventure.


In other news, I'm a multi-millionaire now. I'm looking for private jets to buy, but the sellers don't seem to accept the price in Vietnamese Dong. I stopped to change the rest of my dollars into dong before leaving Singapore and would probably have been easy to rip off at the money exchange as I struggled slightly to keep up as my 2.8 million was counted out. For reference, 1 million dong is about US$43AU$59 or £34.


Taking Jetstar Asia really makes me wonder why Jetstar Australia is so awful. The seats are much better and the whole thing just feels less cheap. And it's costing me less than a third of the price of similar length flights. The flight was good and reasonably empty so I got a window seat. The view is mostly sea though so I had a power nap. The lack of being able to do that is what made Singapore more tiring for me. Normally if I am in a place where I'm doing early mornings and nights, like I will be doing in Vietnam, I rest for a couple of hours in the middle of the day, but I wasn't doing that in Singapore. I certainly enjoyed Singapore though and am very pleased that I included a week there in my itinerary.


Upon landing I got a local SIM, unlimited data for $9 is pretty good indeed, spent ages going through immigration then called a Grab. Grab is in Vietnam as well, it's in pretty much all of SE Asia, and the taxi drivers seemed quite displeased when they came up to me and I said I had called a Grab. I don't think they expect tourists to use Grab. When I said to one confused looking taxi driver that I got Grab because it's cheap which I said in an enquiring way expecting him to respond with taxis are cheap too, he just muttered 'yes, Grab is very cheap' and walked away. I don't think they like it.


It was 75K for a 30 minute ride from the airport to the very centre of the city. Grab has GrabBike in Vietnam too which is Grab with motorbike taxis and I saw loads of them around since the drivers had special coats. I'm unsure about using them though because it looks like I will probably die. They're about half the price of a GrabCar but saving $2 on a half hour ride is something I'm not sure about because, you know, death and such.


Vietnam's traffic is notoriously bad and dangerous and while it could be worse and other places are worse on different ways - Bangkok seems to be much worse in terms of sheer mass of traffic for example - the thing about HCMC is that there are just so many bikes everywhere, there were two occasions on the ride from the airport where I genuinely thought we would crash into a bike. The other thing is lanes, they seem to be just pretty white markings to break up the black of the road and have no relation at all to where the cars are supposed to drive. It's quite full on, especially compared to Singapore. The bikes also treat the pavement as fair game and crossing roads is quite full on.


I'm staying in a hotel in the very centre of the city which is an area that is best described as 'mental'. I'm staying here for two nights, as mentioned, to walk around the city a bit and also to visit the zoo which I will do tomorrow.


After I checked in and got sorted it was just gone 5 PM and I went for a walk around the local area. It is a very, very intense city indeed and walking around th area is most certainly an experience. But I wasn't even killed once by a motorbike so I feel like I'm ahead.


Vietnam is also known for not having any birds anywhere outside of core protected areas and this is noticeable in the city. Despite there being tree-lined roads, there are very few birds indeed. I saw exactly two pigeons and a couple of sparrows.


I had Vietnamese food for dinner because, well, you would, and it was very good because, well, it would be, although paying for things is very annoying and you loose track of zeros. Is this a 5000 or 50000 or 500000 note because it makes all the difference!


Anyway, I'm going to have an early night tonight to be well rested tonight and tomorrow night so that I'm ready for the very early starts and late finishes that Cat Tien will involve.


Anyway, HCMC is intense. Unlike camping, which is in tents.
 
LaughingDove said:
Grab has GrabBike in Vietnam too which is Grab with motorbike taxis and I saw loads of them around since the drivers had special coats. I'm unsure about using them though because it looks like I will probably die. They're about half the price of a GrabCar but saving $2 on a half hour ride is something I'm not sure about because, you know, death and such.
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This is something I totally sympathise with. When I'm reading one of the @Chlidonias Goes To Asia threads and he just jumps on motorbike taxis everywhere it makes me feel ill. I'm not adverse to motorbikes as such, but I lack balance and co-ordination (Even whilst sober, smart arses! :p) and any time I've been on the back of a motorbike I've always felt like I'm going to die. I've never fallen off but it's been close a couple of times, enough times that I won't get on the back of one again! :eek:

LaughingDove said:
Anyway, HCMC is intense. Unlike camping, which is in tents.
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Awful, absolutely awful! I approve. :)
 
Brum said:
This is something I totally sympathise with. When I'm reading one of the @Chlidonias Goes To Asia threads and he just jumps on motorbike taxis everywhere it makes me feel ill. I'm not adverse to motorbikes as such, but I lack balance and co-ordination (Even whilst sober, smart arses! :p) and any time I've been on the back of a motorbike I've always felt like I'm going to die. I've never fallen off but it's been close a couple of times, enough times that I won't get on the back of one again! :eek:
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Pssh, I've almost died loads of times on motorbike taxis in Asia. But you know what they say - it doesn't count until it actually happens.
 
LaughingDove said:
After my Vietnam tour of HCMC-Cat Tien-Dalat-HCMC for 15 days I fly to Bangkok for 10 days. I have an Aunt in Bangkok and I can stay with her and do things in Bangkok or I could go on short trips from Bangkok. Those ten days are totally unplanned. If anyone wants to suggest Bangkok attractions or local trips, go ahead.
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In Bangkok, I might suggest the Snake Farm, and also the Insect Place (at Chatuchak Park I think, from memory). I haven't been to either yet but they must be interesting.

Outside Bangkok, I'd suggest the Lyle's Flying Fox colony as a day trip at the place I can't remember the name of.

Also, check if it's a good time of year for the Irrawaddy Dolphins just south of Bangkok.
 
Chlidonias said:
Pssh, I've almost died loads of times on motorbike taxis in Asia. But you know what they say - it doesn't count until it actually happens.
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Almost dying does get you more travelling birder street cred though...

Not as much, however, as twitching a species in a place under terrorist control, being kidnapped and held for several years by a terrorist organisation, and then when you manage to escape still uploading your images of said extremely rare species with a remark in the comments advising people not to twitch it because you'll be kidnapped. You've still got a little work to do before you're really legendary Chli! :D

(This actually happened - look up pictures of Silu Hornbills on the Oriental Bird Club)
 
LaughingDove said:
Vietnam is also known for not having any birds anywhere outside of core protected areas and this is noticeable in the city. Despite there being tree-lined roads, there are very few birds indeed. I saw exactly two pigeons and a couple of sparrows.
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I saw quite a few birds around Dalat, despite the town being filled with wildlife restaurants, but this was unusual for any human-populated area in Vietnam. When I got back to Thailand there were suddenly birds everywhere, which really emphasised how badly Vietnam has been depleted.

The grounds of the Saigon Zoo has birds about as well.
 
Saigon Zoo

Once I had gone out to find breakfast I called a Grab to go to the zoo. A GrabCar that is, not a bike. I felt that not dying was worth the 57p extra cost. There's probably a way to get there by bus, but the Grab was less than £1.10 and it didn't feel worth the effort which isn't the best example for budget travel and you could spend a long time in Vietnam for incredibly cheaply but since I'm only here for two weeks, I'm going to strike a balance. On that breakfast note though, I would like to make the observation that Vietnam knows how to do bread! Seemingly no where else in Asia does good bread, sure Malaysia has slightly odd but perfectly good potato buns, but Vietnam has actual French baguettes! Proper ones!

Getting to the zoo involved lots of cutting across junctions in ways that seemed less than ideal as well as lots of honking and bikes where the driver was either looking at their phone or had headphones on. Although all the bikes are horribly scratched and the traffic can be a bit slow, some kind of order does seem to emerge in the road and I haven't actually seen any accidents.

So in terms of the zoo then, it's a tricky one to review. I don't think you can really call it a 'good' zoo but it's difficult to just dismiss it as a standard bad zoo. Many of the enclosures are small and concretey and cage-like. In fact, I would say that most of them have far too much concrete and metal bars, but very few were actually horrendous and the zoo clearly has old infrastructure and enclosures that it can't change and they seem to be doing the best they can with the infrastructure that they've got. The reptile house seemed pretty bad, it looked very run down and many of the reptiles seemed to have various injuries, but for many of the mammals and most of the birds the enclosures seemed perfectly ok. They had the appearance of looking run down and a bit neglected, but I don't think they were particularly neglected from an animal welfare point of view, they just looked old. It's very different to any of the Singapore zoos of course which all look very fancy and nice but I wouldn't say Saigon Zoo is horrifically bad.

The zoo is Saigon Zoo and Botanic Gardens so has some greenery around including an orchid house and bonsai tree garden. There were very few birds around despite the greenery though and it actually is noticeable. I didn't see any mynas for example and only a couple of pigeons and some Spotted Doves. There were absolutely loads of very large House Rats though and a few squirrels too. I think they're Variable Squirrels? Around the lotus pond there were some swamphens along with storks and things and I think the swamphens are probably part of the captive collection rather than wild (?) But Indochinese Swamphens would occur around here and would be new.

There were a fair few interesting species around including Golden Cats, Burmese Ferret-badger, Pangolin, Javan Mongoose, and on the bird front quite a few pairs of Crested Argus which is a really nice bird and hopefully they're breeding there because they do have a lot of them. The zoo also holds Red- Black- and Grey- Shanked Doucs which is nice.

The zoo feels a bit scattered around haphazardly and the map is comically bad, but this is comparing it to Singapore's very visitor experience oriented sort of set-up.

It was very hot and humid of course and it did rain a far bit which I sat out for because I was in no rush. Luckily, there were lots of stalls selling ice cream or what the label described as 'vanilla flavoured confectionary with compound chocolate' presumably because those mass produced cones were too far removed from any milk to refer to them as ice cream.

You could do the zoo in probably about 3 hours but ideally it's probably a half day zoo and I stayed until about 2. The enclosures are extremely difficult to photograph through and it does feel a bit run down, but if you have your expectations set right - which I did - and you're not expecting something that would fit in Western Europe or Singapore it's perfectly good. I've seen much worse enclosures in EU zoos and I think a decent job is done with what they have.

I then headed back to where I'm staying in the city centre in what is called District 1. The city is divided into district 1-19 which is a distinctly Hunger Games-esque way of numbering the city. Another brief comment that I'll make is that I'm pleased to finally be able to plug in my European sockets into the wall without an adapter here in Vietnam. It's the first time since May that I've been able to charge things without needing a massive clunky travel adapter.

I chilled in my room a little bit - it's air conditioned so literally chilled - and went for a walk around the centre just to look at everything. Boring is definitely not a word you could use to describe a walk around the centre of Ho Chi Minh. Bloody terrifying is more like it. Whenever I had to cross a road, I really felt like I was increasing my chances of death by orders for magnitude and the pavements are used entirely for bike parking and for street stalls so you have no choice but to walk in the road. Christ on a bike - because you know he would be on a bike in Vietnam - it's really tiring! At dinner, I ended up having a long but very interesting conversation with the owners of the restaurant, one of whom was a neuroscientist. You know, a neuroscientist running a local restaurant in the city centre, bog standard stuff.

Tomorrow, the plan is to get a bus in the morning to head to Cat Tien National Park!
 
LaughingDove said:
On that breakfast note though, I would like to make the observation that Vietnam knows how to do bread! Seemingly no where else in Asia does good bread, sure Malaysia has slightly odd but perfectly good potato buns, but Vietnam has actual French baguettes! Proper ones!
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As you are British this is not entirely unexpected, but we need to have a good discussion in the future about what can be called proper bread....

A baguette is a very French approach to bread: it looks very fancy and they make a big fuss about it, but it is not much more than processed air.

LaughingDove said:
There were a fair few interesting species around including Golden Cats, Burmese Ferret-badger, Pangolin, Javan Mongoose, and on the bird front quite a few pairs of Crested Argus which is a really nice bird and hopefully they're breeding there because they do have a lot of them. The zoo also holds Red- Black- and Grey- Shanked Doucs which is nice.
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Did you have a chance to taste any of those yet?
 
LaughingDove said:
There were absolutely loads of very large House Rats though and a few squirrels too. I think they're Variable Squirrels? Around the lotus pond there were some swamphens along with storks and things and I think the swamphens are probably part of the captive collection rather than wild (?) But Indochinese Swamphens would occur around here and would be new.
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Yes, Variable Squirrels. They're introduced of course, so I expect they'd be a subspecies-mix. For the waterbirds some are obviously captive (e.g. the storks), some are probably wild (e.g. little egrets and night herons), but others are in the middle, like the swamphens. But you'll see them at Crocodile Lake so no worries.

LaughingDove said:
There were a fair few interesting species around including Golden Cats, Burmese Ferret-badger, Pangolin, Javan Mongoose, and on the bird front quite a few pairs of Crested Argus which is a really nice bird and hopefully they're breeding there because they do have a lot of them. The zoo also holds Red- Black- and Grey- Shanked Doucs which is nice.
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Grey-shanked Douc is new since my visit (as is pangolin but that's just a pangolin so meh).

LaughingDove said:
Whenever I had to cross a road, I really felt like I was increasing my chances of death by orders for magnitude and the pavements are used entirely for bike parking and for street stalls so you have no choice but to walk in the road.
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Crossing roads in Asia is easy, once you're used to it. You can tell the newby tourists because they just stand there eternally hesitating because there are no gaps in the traffic. For the locals and old-hands - they just walk straight out. The vehicles are good at avoiding pedestrians because it's a normal part of the road. The only thing you can't do is to try and avoid the traffic while you're crossing the road, because that throws off the approaching driver and you'll likely get hit. Watch the locals crossing the road and you'll see what I mean.
 
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