Doucs And Dong: Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part four (2015)

heavens knows. I have been told that birding in south and central Vietnam is more difficult than the North, although I'm not sure why that should be. I plan on going to the north on my next visit, so I guess I will find out (and I will be on the look out for Melogale cucphuongensis!). A lot of it I think just came down to bad luck. I "should" have seen this species or that species, but simply didn't. I could go back to the same places and see those same species easily; it's just the way it goes sometimes.

I think you made the right choice with your change - although I will emphasise that Cat Tien was great and I did see a lot of mammals there, relatively speaking.

There are one and a half more entries left to post for Vietnam, then a couple for Bukit Fraser, and then that will be the end. Until Part Five....

 

Day Eighteen: Bach Ma to Danang

My second-to-last day in Vietnam. I was leaving for Danang today and had decided to walk down the mountain to the HQ rather than pay for a car. Bad idea. A very very bad idea.

It had seemed like a good plan in my head. Firstly it would save me a lot of money. Secondly I could look out for doucs along the way. Thirdly I could easily stop off at the Pheasant Trail on the way. It was all downhill to the HQ and 16km is an easy walk. Maybe three hours tops. Not a problem.

The first hour was a doddle. I was still high up so the temperature was amicable and the sun hadn't come over the mountains yet. The next three hours however, not so much. Lower down the temperature was back up in the high thirties, the sun directly overhead, not a lick of shade, and worst of all the road was made of pale grey concrete off which the sun's heat just bounced straight back upwards like a furnace. It became a gruelling death-march, if such a thing existed in Vietnam. Almost at the bottom, at about km6, I met a group of local tourists doing the walk up - crazy people - they already looked like they weren't going to make it. I'd hate to think how long it eventually took them, if it took me almost four hours coming down!

Before that though, when the idea still seemed non-suicidal, I had passed the English-speaking guy from my villa, a few kilometres down from the summit coming back up from the village on his motorbike with more beer for the retaurant. He said he had just seen a troop of doucs further down the road. They were gone before I got to see them. I didn't pay a lot of attention to birds on the way down, noting only Puff-throated Bulbuls, Dark-necked Tailorbird, and what I think was a Mountain Hawk-eagle. Also a Black Giant Squirrel and a cool black Tiger Beetle looking like some humungous killer ant as it patrolled the road.

The Pheasant Trail is at about the 8.5km mark. It starts with a steep set of steps, but once up them you find that the trail goes downhill. There were masses of mosquitoes but no leeches at all, the complete opposite of the summit trails. There were also none of the silver-legged harvestmen. The trail is 3km long but I only did half of it, partly because there was literally not a single bird to be seen and partly because I knew I was going to have to be walking uphill all the way back to the road which did not appeal to me at this stage of the day! It looked like it should be good for an early morning visit though, so next time I'll try for that.

When I finally reached the HQ, I got a motorbike the last three kilometres to the highway, and almost immediately got picked up by a bus bound for Danang (two hours, 55,000 Dong). There had been an Italian guy going to the highway on a motorbike at the same time as me, so naturally we ended up on the same bus, and equally naturally ended up sitting next to each other - because our legs were too long for us to sit anywhere except in the two seats right by the door. Part way through the journey he is chatting away about something-or-other when suddenly his eyes almost popped out of his head and he yelps "Holy Cow! There's a massive bug on your back!" (He actually did say "Holy Cow"). He and a Vietnamese guy sitting on the other side both swatted away at it and apparently it went out the door. I was just disappointed that I didn't even get to see it. For all I know it could have been living on my back for days. It could have been a Time Beetle. The Italian guy said it looked like a beetle but "this big" (holding his thumb and forefinger apart) and it had claws (holding his hands up like a dinosaur). I guess it was a stag beetle. A whip scorpion would have been cool though. Yeah, but he was freaked out. "I'm ready to get off this bus now!!" he said.

In Danang I got a city bus to the Han Market where there were supposed to be cheap hotels. There were not. I spent quite a long time wandering around, finding rooms ranging from 300,000 to 2,000,000 but nothing less. Eventually I ended up back at the very first hotel I had gone into, the Thoi Dai, because the girl at reception gave me a good offer.

It was about 4pm by this stage, so I had a shower and changed my sweat-drenched mountain clothes - how the heck can a person lose that much water from their body and not keel over as a dessicated husk?! Then I took off for Nui Son Tra, a forest-covered peninsula on the edge of town, for my last shot at finding Red-shanked Doucs.

In one morning in 1819 a ship's crew in Danang shot over 100 doucs at Son Tra before breakfast. During the American War the US soldiers in Danang used doucs as target practice and captured them alive in order to torture them to death for amusement. Surprisingly, in light of these sorts of depredations, Son Tra is still home to doucs and it is supposed to be a reliable place to see them.

Unfortunately the guy I got to take me there on a motorbike was one of those ones you end up with sometimes where instead of doing what you want them to do, does what he thinks you ought to want to do. First we went to a beach. I said no. Then he needed petrol so we went in the opposite direction. At the petrol station I made it clear, again, that we were going up to the top of the peninsula. This he attempted to accomplish by driving around the coastal road instead of, you know, up the road which goes to the top of the peninsula! Once I finally got up to the top it was extremely difficult to get him to not drive at top speed around the roads. The upshot of it all was that I did not see any Red-shanked Doucs nor, indeed, even any of the macaques which are supposed to be swarmingly common up there (I have read both Rhesus and Assamese Macaques live there and I have never seen wild Assamese Macaques before, so the trip was a double failure).

No-one else was seeing any monkeys either, so it wasn't just me. A Dutch guy saw me with my binoculars and came over to ask if I could tell him where all the monkeys were. Sadly, I could not.


Birds seen today:
Puff-throated Bulbul Alophoixus pallidus
Dark-necked Tailorbird Orthotomus atrogularis
Mountain Hawk-eagle Spizaetus nipalensis
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus

Mammals seen today:
Black Giant Squirrel Ratufa bicolor

 

yes, Pheasant Trail.

It is named after the Crested Argus which live there. But not on this day. If I get back to Bach Ma and have enough time I plan on staying down at the HQ for one or two nights so that I can be on this trail early morning (it is about 5km up from the HQ). Apparently the chances of seeing Crested Argus are very slim indeed, but a very slim chance is still a chance (hence why I still had a look in the middle of the day).

There are Silver Pheasants and some other species at Bach Ma as well, which I also did not see. Edward's Pheasant was found there in 1998.

Oh, also Saola "may" still occur there but that's not a pheasant so I shouldn't have even mentioned it.

 

Day Nineteen: Danang (Vietnam) to Bukit Fraser (Malaysia)

My flight out of Vietnam to Kuala Lumpur was today. I had been going to try for the doucs again at Son Tra in the morning, hoping to sneak them in at the last minute, but I was otherwise occupied so I didn't. I did manage to visit the local zoo, such as it is, on the way to the airport though. The Danang Zoo is located at 29/3 Park (also called 29 March Park, and named after the 29th of March 1973 when the last American troops were pulled out of Vietnam). The park is largely composed of a large lake, around which is a strip of grass and trees with topiary animals and amusement rides. There are no fences so the zoo is open all the time, and there is no entrance fee. I had heard that the zoo was small, but in fact it is even smaller than small. There is a concrete yard for Sambar, a circular pool for a Siamese Crocodile, and six or seven little concrete cages for a Binturong, a python and some macaques (Rhesus, Pig-tailed, Assamese and Stump-tailed). I didn't bother taking any photos (you could literally have got the entire zoo in one frame). Total time spent at the zoo was three minutes. Fastest zoo visit ever!

At the Danang Airport I changed my last 1.4 million Dong into 233 Malaysian Ringgits.

I would be in Malaysia for just a couple of days before heading home to New Zealand, and I was going to be spending it at Bukit Fraser (so no zoo visits in Kuala Lumpur). Bukit Fraser is in the hills north of Kuala Lumpur and is really easy to get to. So easy, in fact, that my intention was to go straight there after landing at 4.20pm.

The KLIA2 airport is just new (opened in 2014) and it is ... what's the word? Annoying? Close enough.

When you get off your plane you have to walk a looooong way to the Customs area. I swear it has to be at least a kilometre. Then I had a half-hour wait for my bag to come round on the luggage carousel. There's a handy digital display which tells you when the bags from your flight will start being loaded onto the belt (ten minutes...) and then when the last bag has been loaded. My bag was the second-to-last bag to arrive. Then I went to find the train station.

The second level of the airport is a mall. I don't mean a collection of duty-free shops, I mean an actual mall. There's even a supermarket in there! I thought it would just be selling packaged food of the sort tourists would buy to eat on the plane, but there's fresh meat, frozen food, cereals. Who thinks "hey, I need to do some grocery shopping... I'll just pop out to the airport!"? The funniest thing in the airport-mall though is the shoe shop with a statue of a golden bear almost the size of an elephant which takes up half the shop's floor-space. Just really wierd. There are, of course, signs pointing everywhere so you can find your way around. The only problem is that when you reach a certain point - not the point at which you have reached your objective, but somewhere before that point - you will encounter another sign telling you the place you want is in the direction you just came from. If you follow that sign, you arrive back at the first sign.

Nevertheless I eventually found the entrance to the station and took the train to KL Sentral in the city (it takes 33 minutes and costs 35 Ringgits). Then I took another train to the town of Rawang where I transferred to a third train to Kuala Kubu Bahru. These two latter trains together cost 5.60 Ringgits and take about 1.5 hours. From KKB it is an hour to Bukit Fraser and you need a taxi. Back when I first went to Bukit Fraser in 2006 there was a bus which did the route but this was long ago done away with, so now taxi is the only public transport option. Last year the taxi was 80 Ringgits each way, now it is 90 (I asked around a number of non-taxi-drivers to make sure of this). Of course the drivers will fleece you if they can. This time I was told it would cost 150 Ringgits "because it is night-time." I said I wasn't paying twice the normal rate and there was a short stand-off before the price dropped to 120. I said this was still unacceptable and there was a much longer stand-off. There was only one taxi so this could go on for a while. The driver even called over a staff member from the station to tell me 120 was the "real" price (except he told the guy in Malay to tell me that, not realising I knew what he was saying). It wasn't until I got fed up with it, said I would just stay in town that night and go in the morning, then started walking away, that he finally broke. (If you're wondering about exchange rates, there are currently about 2.7 Ringgits to one NZ Dollar. So 150 Ringgits is about NZ$55 or US$35 or £22).

The cheapest place to stay at Bukit Fraser is the Puncak Inn, and their cheapest room is 110 Ringgits, breakfast included. Not the most budgiest of birding spots but it is worth it. I had been going to go out spotlighting as soon as I arrived, and try to finally find a Sunda Slow Loris, but I was really tired and after washing my stinky Bach Ma clothes I just wanted to go to sleep.


Birds seen today:
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
118) Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis
House Crow Corvus splendens

 

Day Twenty: Bukit Fraser

My first day at Bukit Fraser started out looking like my run of bad luck was carrying over from Vietnam to Malaysia. I headed first to the Telekom Loop which I had found on previous visits to be the most birdy place in the area. There were a few bird-waves, ironically containing many of the birds I had already just seen in Vietnam - Mountain Fulvettas, Golden Babblers, Silver-eared Mesias, Black-throated Sunbirds - but it was really very slow going with only about twenty species seen along this road in the morning.

I had lunch at the food court then walked the 4km road to the Jeriau Waterfall. I had seen Siamang along this road on my last visit, but not today. Instead there were Crab-eating Macaques, including one male individual which made a really good show of attacking me for no reason at all. Crab-eaters often get aggressive around humans because people feed them, but they usually back off quite quickly if you stand up to them. This one however repeatedly charged me on the road, shying back when I pretended to pick up a stone to throw, then it'd come right back. On one charge it got to within a couple of feet (coming from the other side of the road, so pretty determined). I really thought I was going to have to actually hurt it, but eventually it stopped. There seem to be a lot more macaques around Bukit Fraser than previously, and they (or at least some of them) are certainly getting more stroppy. Worth noting is that these were the first primates I had seen since leaving Cat Tien, apart for the non-countable glimpse at Bach Ma.

Elsewhere along the road I saw a group of Southern Pig-tailed Macaques and two separate troops of White-thighed Langurs. Some of the nicer birds seen along the way included Black-eared Shrike-babbler, Speckled Piculet (a sparrow-sized woodpecker), Red-headed Trogon, and best of all a Jambu Fruit Dove (in the same fig tree as a Himalayan Striped Squirrel). I have been looking for Jambu Fruit Doves for years, but even though they are supposed to be common I had never been able to see one. This one was a female, so not as colourful as a male, but very nice nonetheless. I was going to return here the next day to see if any males were present, but I couldn't remember where the tree was!

I returned to the food court for second lunch around 4.30pm, then went back to the Telekom Loop. First I tried to stop in at the birdwatcher centre which was above the restaurant in the middle of town, but I was told it was no longer open to tourists. I enquired about the bird list which they used to have available and was told to try the info centre (which is the Puncak Inn). They told me that there is now no bird list, only the photographic bird book - but they don't have that either because the publisher wasn't producing any more runs. I don't know how true any of that is, but it is a shame if so.

I didn't really see anything on the Telekom Loop during the last couple of hours of the day except a lone White-thighed Langur and a couple of Slender Squirrels. After dark I spent another hour or so on the Telekom Loop, then headed for the Old Road (the one which comes up from The Gap to Bukit Fraser), which is 8km long and through forest the entire way. Nothing there either. This is the third time I have been to Bukit Fraser, where everyone else has no trouble finding Slow Lorises on every second tree, but for me it remains lorisless. I did encounter several free-roaming dogs at night, which I was not happy about. Dogs are the one thing I fear when travelling because they are unpredictable and the dangerous ones are not afraid of people. On previous visits I had only ever seen one dog, and that one lives behind a fence at someone's house.


Birds seen today:
119) Glossy (White-bellied) Swiftlet Collocalia esculenta
120) Little Spiderhunter Arachnothera longirostra
121) Little Pied Flycatcher Ficedula westermanni
122) Long-tailed Sibia Heterophasia picaoides
Streaked Spiderhunter Arachnothera magna
123) Little Cuckoo-dove Macropygia ruficeps
Oriental Magpie-robin Copsychus saularis
Silver-eared Mesia Leiothrix argentauris
Mountain Fulvetta Alcippe peracensis
Black-throated Sunbird Aethopyga saturata
Golden Babbler Stachridopsis chrysaea
124) Chestnut-capped Laughing Thrush Garrulax mitratus
125) Black-browed Barbet Megalaima oorti
126) Buff-breasted Babbler Pellorneum tickelli
127) Mountain Tailorbird Phyllergates cucullatus
Mountain Bulbul Hypsipetes mcclellandii
White-throated Fantail Rhipidura albicollis
128) Fire-tufted Barbet Psilopogon pyrolophus
129) Mountain Imperial Pigeon Ducula badia
130) Grey-chinned Minivet Pericrocotus solaris
Orange-bellied Leafbird Chloropsis hardwickii
131) Lesser Racquet-tailed Drongo Dicrurus remifer
132) Speckled Piculet Picumnus innominatus
133) Black-eared Shrike-babbler Pteruthius melanotos
Red-headed Trogon Harpactes erythrocephalus
134) Slaty-backed Forktail Enicurus schistaceus
135) Verditer Flycatcher Eumyias thalassinus
136) Jambu Fruit Dove Ptilinopus jambu
Grey Wagtail Motacilla cinerea
137) Pacific Swallow Hirundo tahitica

Mammals seen today:
Pallas' (Red-bellied) Squirrel Callosciurus erythraeus
19) Grey-bellied Squirrel Callosciurus caniceps
Crab-eating Macaque Macaca fascicularis
20) Southern Pig-tailed Macaque Macaca nemestrina
21) White-thighed Langur Presbytis siamensis
22) Himalayan Striped Squirrel Tamiops macclellandi
23) Slender Squirrel Sundasciurus tenuis

 

the female Jambu Fruit Dove

 

Day Twenty-One: Bukit Fraser to Kuala Lumpur

I had a walk down the Old Road this morning before breakfast but there were only the most common of birds to be seen. Coming back up was better. I saw some trees shaking up ahead from primate action and was pleased to find that it wasn't Crab-eating Macaques as expected but rather a family group of Siamang in a fig tree right next to the road who just sat there completely unconcerned, feeding on the leaves. Their positions amongst the branches were pretty hopeless for photos unfortunately; I took a lot of the juvenile even though there was a twig across his face in every shot. They provided what birders call a "walk-away view" - that is, I was the one to walk away when I had had my fill of watching them, instead of the animals leaving first. Walk-away views are the best kind in animal-watching.

Bukit Fraser is one of the best places to see wild Siamang. I have been here three times and seen Siamang every visit. I have also seen White-thighed Langurs every visit, but Dusky Langurs in only one of the three.

After breakfast I took a quick walk through the Hemmant's Trail specifically to find a Rufous-browed Flycatcher which I successfully did (one of the cutest little flycatchers there is). I have seen Brown Wood Owl on this trail before, but not today. While I was on the trail I heard a crashing sound from the canopy above. My first thought was "monkeys" but a split second later I realised what it really was and ran like a rabbit as a great rotten branch came smashing down onto the path. Good thing I had run or I would have missed my taxi. And the rest of my life.

The taxi driver back to Kuala Kubu Bahru was the same guy who took me back on my last visit. "When was your last visit to Bukit Fraser?" he asked me. "December 2013" I said. "Yes, I remember you from then." Everyone I meet in Asia always seems to recognise me again, no matter how short a time I had met them previously or how many years before it was. It's really weird.

Once back in Kuala Lumpur I went to the Puduraya Bus Station because there are cheap hotels opposite. KL really is a dump of a town. I ended up at the KL City Lodge which, while not a total hole, is... um... I don't know how to finish that sentence. Anyway, it's cheap and the guy on reception was friendly and helpful which is unusual in this part of the town. I have to say I don't really like Peninsular Malaysia much, even though I've been there quite a bit. There are certain parts of the peninsula I do like, such as Bukit Fraser, Taman Negara, even Melaka, but overall I prefer every other Asian country which surrounds it. The food is much better in the other countries, the people are nicer, the vibe is generally much friendlier, the accommodations are almost always better. It's kind of like if you have a food court with stalls for Thai food, Mexican food, Chinese, Italian, Moroccan - and then right in the middle is the Eskimo stall selling rotten shark and seal blubber. That's Malaysia.


Birds seen today:
Glossy (White-bellied) Swiftlet Collocalia esculenta
Pacific Swallow Hirundo tahitica
Oriental Magpie-robin Copsychus saularis
Chestnut-capped Laughing Thrush Garrulax mitratus
Little Cuckoo-dove Macropygia ruficeps
Fire-tufted Barbet Psilopogon pyrolophus
Mountain Imperial Pigeon Ducula badia
Mountain Fulvetta Alcippe peracensis
Golden Babbler Stachridopsis chrysaea
White-rumped Munia Lonchura striata
138) Rufous-browed Flycatcher Ficedula solitaris
Mountain Bulbul Hypsipetes mcclellandii
139) Everett's White-eye Zosterops everetti
Streaked Spiderhunter Arachnothera magna
House Crow Corvus splendens
Feral Pigeon Columba livia
Tree Sparrow Passer montanus

Mammals seen today:
Crab-eating Macaque Macaca fascicularis
24) Siamang Symphalangus syndactylus
Grey-bellied Squirrel Callosciurus caniceps
Himalayan Striped Squirrel Tamiops macclellandi

 

the juvenile Siamang

 

The End

Short entry for today because it is the end of the trip. I had a flight out of KL heading for home. The only incident of note was when entering the departure lounge at my gate. The airport has layers upon layers of security - you have to pass through about four checkpoints before boarding the plane. At the departure lounge I was stopped by a security guard. He looks at my passport, says "you are a New Zealander?" and read out my name slowly. Then he says "can I see your ID card?"

Many countries in Asia have compulsory ID cards which all citizens are required to possess, I assume because it is so easy to move illegally across the land borders. New Zealand, obviously, does not have such a requirement.

"New Zealanders don't have ID cards," I said, adding helpfully "We just have the passport."

"Show me your ID card," he replies.

"I don't have an ID card, I'm a New Zealander."

"You need to show me your ID card."

"New Zealanders don't have ID cards."

"You need to show me your ID card to prove you're a New Zealander."

"New Zealanders don't have ID cards."

"Where is your ID card?"

Just a strange strange situation, where he is demanding to see something which I literally cannot show him, and which as an airport security person he should know I cannot show him. Fortunately one of the (obviously better trained!) security guards stepped over, took one quick glance at my passport and said "yep, that's fine, go on through."

 

they can, but they normally don't. However where macaques are introduced into the ranges of other species interbreeding may occur, e.g. Rhesus Macaques have been introduced into some parts of southern Vietnam where they did not occur naturally, and where they now hybridise with the native Crab-eating Macaques.

Obviously captivity breaks down any natural barriers to interbreeding which hold in the wild.

 

currently my next trip is planned to be a return to Vietnam, and I shall not count Red-shanked Douc until I see one well enough to have actually seen it!

But we shall see.

 

that's quite a late prediction isn't it? Do you mean the start of August?