We are just about to embark on a very exciting adventure and for myself, Scott and Luke it actually starts off with a very literal adventure, and we’re going to do everything we can to bring you along for the journey from your living room.
You may already have heard us talk about Khe Nuoc Trong in Vietnam as we have been supporting the World Land Trust project there for a number of years. However, this year we will see additional work being carried out over there.
The park will continue to support the World Land Trust but will also be working directly with Viet Nature to fund a brand-new conservation project in the area. The Vietnamese pheasant is something e have spoken about before, but not many people know of the Vietnamese argus, which arguably is less endangered than the Vietnamese pheasant but heading very rapidly in the same extinction direction. We don’t have this species at WWP, but we still want to help it survive and are as such helping to establish the first conservation project which is specifically looking to help this species.
Luckily, they live in the same area as the Vietnamese pheasant along with other animals such as red shanked douc langurs, white cheeked gibbons, leopard cats, moon bears, sun bears, binturong and many more. So, all of these species will indirectly also benefit from the education, surveying and ranger patrol work we will be carrying out in the area.
Well, that’s the exciting adventure for the park and charity. But we want to also go out there and see the project for ourselves – after all we will be supporting it for a minimum of 5 years and have some meetings we need to attend which would be much easier in person too. This is an incredible opportunity which is going to involve trekking and sleeping in the jungle (no tents, just hammocks), caving, meeting local communities & partners and getting a feel for how the local wildlife fits in to local culture and customs. This will include one of the most amazing wildlife experiences so far in my life, and I can’t wait to share it with Scott and Luke, and that’s getting up at 5am to go and find gibbons saying good morning to one another in the forest.
I did also work out that it is going to involve in excess of 70 hours of travelling across the 12 days as we head in to Hanoi in northern Vietnam and head down the country, finishing in Ho Chi Minh City. What we want to do is bring you social media updates from the trip and put together a YouTube mini series to allow you to learn and experience the same things we do… without being sandwiched between Luke and Scott for all those hours in a fart filled flying metal tube – because that’s exactly what I’m going to have to go through!
This is all happening at the end of the month so keep an eye out for those initial updates and I can’t wait to share the beauty of Vietnam with you. I have been before and am so pleased to be getting involved with this amazing project with a beautiful species.
I’ve been keeping a diary of how we’re getting on so far which I am including below! It’s a long read and some things might get repeated as the above was the intro I was making for the newsletter, but Leanne didn’t want it, she wanted a blog format instead, but I wasn’t going to let it go to waste!
I doubt I will make any diary posts while I’m out in Vietnam but I will keep notes, so you might see another update before we travel and then the rest will come upon our return, when I will also start putting together a mini YouTube series to document the trip.
22nd November 2022
For a few weeks now we have been quietly making preparations for what is undoubtedly going to be an incredible experience for myself, Luke and Scott as we embark on a visit to the Khe Nuoc Trong Nature Reserve in central Vietnam early next year. The reason for the visit is to go and see for ourselves the work being carried out by Viet Nature which we are supporting.
The National Park is an amazing and incredibly important habitat and will hopefully one day play host to a release site for the Vietnamese pheasant. If you caught some of our live park tours during the COVID-19 lock downs you might remember that species and how important they are now. Presumably extinct in the wild, they are in need for in-situ conservation work.
However, whilst we are in a round about way helping the species by investing in the forest there, whilst also benefiting plenty of other species by proxy in the same way, these are not going to be the focus of our project. We will be working to improve habitat and wild numbers of a different bird species. Whilst they may look a bit like a pheasant, and are equally part of the Phasianidae family, the species we are looking at is the Vietnamese argus, which is critically endangered.
We want to see where our funding is going, helping us understand the logistics and challenges of this partnership better as we move forward with this amazing project.
I have been speaking to the people at Viet Nature to slowly start making preparations for the trip which will most likely see us leaving the UK, Vietnam bound at the end of February. This does however mean vaccination time for the 3 of us, and that’s where we start this journey today!
Scott isn’t super keen on vaccinations – he says that he’s alright with them now after all the COVID boosters, but when we put together our video diary of the trip, you decide whether you believe him or not.
As an aside, I’m pretty sure I’m well over due a haircut by now, but I’m just way too tight to pay for 2 before going to Vietnam… and as I type this up right at the end of January I have to admit that I’ve still not been!
As we will be heading into quite remote areas of the forest and even spending a night in a makeshift camp of a hammock under some plastic sheeting we went for a consultation at the SuperDrug travel clinic in Dover to make sure we’re safe. I’ve actually travelled a lot in the past, but the more exotic destinations have been a few years in the past by now to be honest. As a result, we all got a surprise when the consultation turned in to actually receiving our first dose of vaccinations for Rabies, Tetanus, Hepatitis A and Typhoid. Especially when travelling to remote areas, it always pays to be on the safe side.
Back in a week and then a further 2 weeks for courses 2 and 3 of the Rabies jabs.
23rd November 2022
Good news! I just got an email from the clinic to say that my previous rabies vaccinations should be fine with the addition of the booster I had yesterday. Which means that I’m done for now! Although I need to get my Hepatitis A booster in 6 months.
Not such good news for the 2 brothers though! They’ve got to go back in a week and I’ve been advised that their injection will be far more comfortable if they fill in the feedback form before hand! I’m pretty tempted to lose their 2 links for this.
But in all honesty Samantha down at Superdrug was an absolute star and a very good sport. Considering we went in there with the intention of just having a consultation and she was stuck in a room with the 3 of us, she made the appointment an absolute laugh.
Highly recommended from me!
2nd January 2023
I have just completed most of the booking portions of the trip, which I did start a couple of days before Christmas but underestimated just how many different things we would need to get organised. In total there will be 6 flights, 14 car or mini-bus transfers, 6 hotels and well over 20 people we need to meet during this trip which will see us starting in Hanoi and slowly working our way down to Ho Chi Minh City. HCMC by the way is somewhere I have also been – in fact previously it was our base for a week and it is a very busy, lively and friendly city and I can’t wait to finish our trip there.
I’ve travelled these sorts of distances before but for Luke and Scott, I’m pretty sure they’ve never done anywhere even close to 13 hours of flying in a single go. Our flights on the way out will go via Hong Kong and total around 16 hours of travel altogether (not including getting up to Heathrow on the way out) and coming home we’ll travel around the same length of time (maybe a little less as it is a shorter transfer) via Bangkok. I’ve never been to Hong Kong or Bangkok so it’s a shame that we couldn’t spend a transfer day at each, but this trip is already shaping up to be quite a hefty one.
While booking our seats on the flights out (with Cathay Pacific) I did see that you can select your meal type on their flights… 21 different choices! I think I could have a little bit of fun with this one don’t you?
5th January 2023
Finally the whole trip has been booked in, right down to the taxis and even the majority of the equipment we were still missing. It’s amazing what it takes to put together a trip to see what our work in Vietnam is going to achieve over the next few years and then to be able to document it properly too!
Already sitting just outside my office are our dry bags to make sure that all of our stuff stays dry during the many river crossings in the forest, our sleeping bags, jungle formula and water filters. From what I gather, while we are hiking, we will be using the river water for drinking and to save us having to boil it each time, we have some straw filters, which, if necessary even allow you to drink direct from the source. But ours work best when pushed through the straw at higher pressure, so we will fill a bottle, screw on the filter and then squeeze the water out in to a second bottle which will then be our drinking water.
I should probably actually check to make sure these work as advertised before we bring them all the way to the Vietnamese forest to find that they don’t work shouldn’t I?
I have to say though that the sleeping bags, even though they have a comfort rating of 4 degrees c through to 22 degrees c, seem awfully thick to be lugging through the forest and then sleeping in while the air temperature won’t drop much below 20 from what I can see. I’ve slept in a Vietnamese forest in a tent before and I don’t remember the temperature dropping much at all. We’ll see what happens!
Here are some photos of my last camping experience in Vietnam by the way, which was all the way back in 2015 and in far more luxury than what we are going to expect this time around.
27th January 2023
All our stuff has arrived! I think I’m just waiting for literally 3 tiny little torches to supplement our head torches and then we have everything we need… Well, at least I have everything I need, right down to my modified original GameBoy which has become my go to travel companion of late… As for the other 2, I really don’t know if they’re up to date with their stuff.
I do know that Scott has had a rummage around in my stuff and has now also upgraded his hat and got himself a collapsible cup after seeing mine. Although from what I gather it sounds like his cup collapses quite easily – just what you want on a camping trip! I think we’ll have to test just how easily his cup does collapse once we’re there. As for the hat I have what I like to call an adventure hat… Essentially it’s just a green full rimmed hat and apparently it looks like it should be part of a fancy dress outfit for someone heading in to the outback, just missing the little corks. Scott on the other hand, when he wears his backpack, fully looks like he’s off on a school field trip.
Speaking of his bag, he didn’t want mine and Ruth’s second hand bags – those are left for me and Luke, so I had planned to buy him a 120L backpack. That is huge! In comparison mine and Luke’s are 55L each and we can fit sleeping bag, all our equipment and 12 days of clothing in them. So i thought it would be funny for Scott to lug around a bag so big he could get in it himself… But in true Amazon marketplace fashion it came through barely larger than ours and if anything is basically the perfect size.
Anyway, remember the problem I mentioned with our sleeping bags bags being quite thick? Turns out it might not be a problem anyway as I did a practice bag packing the other day and the sleeping bags won’t fit in our dry bags anyway so if we fall over, or more likely if Luke trips Scott in a river, his sleeping bag won’t be usable anyway!
So we had to order a second round of waterproof bags – this time ones which can be compressed, and they seem to do the job quite nicely as we can hang them on to the outside of our actual dry bags using a couple of carabiners.
Speak again soon and I can’t wait to share more of this journey with you!
