2024-birding vietnam: Thurs, Jan 18

We have just settled into our “most basic” room of the trip – the only accommodation in the area. The reason we're here is that tomorrow we are going to hike for an hour to a bird hide Tien has set up in the forest to get good looks at some rare birds – we hope! The birding has been slow so far: lots of days traveling on the bus and being located near the shore or in scrub land with not many of the birds Bob “needs” for his life list. But this second half of the trip should be birdier.

This morning we had a last breakfast at 6:30 at the Sheraton in the lap of luxury and took off at 8. We drove south for an hour on a new divided highway with extensive landscaping which strangely enough parallels the old coast highway. I imagine it is in place to encourage more growth, but along the shore, between the big-name hotels, are skeletons of massive failed resorts, so who knows? This includes a huge amusement park with extensive water park but no one was there.

As we said goodbye to the Sheraton, there was this welcome to the Indian wedding to take place over the next 4 days

We turned west on a smaller highway, driving through villages and rice paddies, and gradually ascending the foothills of the Annamite Mountains. We stopped at a tiny open-air café for lunch. It was next to a section of the highway being resurfaced so a constant fine spray of water was jetted in front of the tables to keep down the dust – I hope we didn’t inject too much of it. The usual rice, stir fired veggies and meats. I managed to leave behind our new chop-sticks-in-a-case that we have been using in place of the cylinders of sticks on restaurant tables that are generally just wiped off between users.

Rice Paddies

Lunch restaurant

Entrance to restaurant where the mist was being sprayed against the dust

We continued up the road finally getting too 5000’. We got out to bird and found it quite cold! We found some birds, among them the yellow-cheeked Tit, a lovely bird with yellow face, black crest and black and white body.

Beautiful views at about 5000ft and finally patches of real forest

We descended to about 3000’ and the town of Tu Mo Rong and pulled into the Hoang Gia Trang Guest House. We got Room 2 and Hil room 3. Two Rock-hard beds each, one sheet and a blanket. It does have en-suite facilities, except the sink leaks onto the floor, so no bare foot trips to the toilet tonight. We are going to put the bench seats on our beds and see if that makes the beds tolerable – we’ll see! (Ours has a disco light with rotating colored lights! Whoopee! KZ) Breakfast will be at 5:30. We had a just edible dinner tonight with (thank God) beer!