Boars, Bears, and Crocodiles - A Day of Forest Fun In Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam

Located roughly 150 kilometers north of Ho Chi Minh City, Cat Tien is a vast natural preserve known for its biodiversity. Home to approximately 30% of Vietnam’s animal species, including sun bears, Sunda pangolins, Siamese crocodiles, a bunch of monkey species, and even the last of the wild Asian elephants. Many of these animals are critically endangered, so I hope to see some of them if I can.

Cat Tien is located deep in the rural forest, and not conveniently located to any other major tourist destinations. As a result, my friends and I were some of the very few foreign visitors to the park that day. The entrance to the park is at the end of a small road and over a river, which you must ferry across.

Once you pay for your ticket you have the option to rent a bicycle, walk, or take a shuttle to some of the major landmarks. We figured that if we took the truck the noise would scare away the animals we were hoping to see and that a bike wouldn’t be practical deep in the forest, so we decided to just walk to the nearest hiking trail.

The first major site we came to was the Giant Tung Tree, which fit the name as it was quite large. I always appreciate being around ancient trees such as this one, and I wonder about all the history that has passed it by during its long life.

On the map, we see there are some rapids nearby, so we follow the trail until we reach the river. When we first reached the river, I thought that maybe the water level must be too low for the rapids, as many of the rocks were exposed.

This conclusion was verified after walking up the riverbed for about 25 minutes. Despite not having a raging river, It was still really cool to walk through this area, jumping from rock to rock, and tossing stones into the many natural pools.

As we had not seen any other sign of the trail along the river, we decided to turn back to where we had entered the riverbed. We rejoin the trail and continue deeper into the forest, heading in the direction of the next closest point of interest …another rapids.

Walking along the forest trail we can hear the howling of monkeys and the songs of many kinds of birds. We try to keep quiet and eyes open in the hopes that we may encounter one of the park’s many rare inhabitants.

Before long, we got to a more active part of the river, and the site of the Heaven Rapids. The water level was higher here, and it seemed there could be some rapids, just not as intense as I had imagined. This was a relaxing place to rest though, as the sounds of the river and birds were rather calming.

We continued back on the trail with the final direction being towards Crocodile Lake, which according to the map was quite far away from our current location. That being said, we had no choice but to walk forward or to walk back, so naturally we chose to go forward. Within about 5 minutes of this decision, we hear some very high-pitched “ree! reee!” sounds coming from the forest not far from the trail, just behind us. It is at this moment that we look at each other and collectively decide we don’t need to see this up close, and we start to run. My adrenaline is pumping, and my mind is racing as to what could be chasing just behind us. I didn’t know at the time, but wild boars are quite common to find in this preserve, and we likely came across two of them fighting.

Suddenly, the trail opened up to the gravel road and we decided it was safe to start walking again. We have the biggest smiles on our faces when the truck to Crocodile Lake comes around the bend and picks us up. We tell the driver our story and he confirms we had just come across some boar, and it's a good thing we didn’t stick around to see them face-to-face.

When we get to Crocodile Lake, we climb up into this sort of treehouse restaurant overlooking the lake.

To calm our nerves and replenish our fluids, we partake in some refreshing Saigon Lager beer while we gaze at the crocodiles below from a safe distance.

In speaking to one of the local guides, we learn that the sun bears would likely not be making an appearance as most of them were at the sanctuary, which happened to be closed that day. On the ride back, we saw a few more monkeys jumping from the trees, and we left the park pleased with the adventure we had.

I hope you enjoyed reading my post. All photos were taken by me.