ChoLon

Saturday, September 27, 2008

We are here in Ho Chi Minh City. We arrived a few days ago. Jonathan gave a talk at the Center for Biodiversity. We've enjoyed hanging out here with Bert and Sherri. We've been wandering around town visiting markets and looking for chairs for the terrace at Bert and Sherri's house. Today we accomplished our mission of finding chairs!!

In the city, there are so many ways to travel. My favorite way to travel is by walking. It is nice to see the city at a slow pace and I have the opportunity to chat with people. If I get hot and tired I can take a rest and maybe have a soda or some water. The problem is that I can't go very far, though. If I need to get someplace quickly I can take a taxi, but taxis can be expensive. There are xe xiclos (bicycle taxi) and xe oms (motorcycles. OM actually means HUG). Sometimes they can be a bit scary, though with the traffic, but they will take you exactly where you need to go. The city buses are cheap- many people use them. The challenging part is that they have a route and you have to figure the  route out. I love trying to figure out how to use the buses- how do I get on? How do I tell the driver I want to get off? When do I get off? There is just so much involved in riding the bus!! It's so fun and a true accomplishment when I can figure it out. 

Well, Jonathan, Sherri, and I rode the bus down to Cholon!! That was kind of the easy part since the bus stopped right at the bus station in Cholon. We ventured out and got on a different bus coming home, and had no problems! WooHoo for us! :) 

We visited the market there, where we bought some things for dinner, and got some chairs for the terrace. Here are some pictures of the market!!

Bau Sau

Tuesday, September 22, 2008

Crocodile Lake

This morning I went with the botany class out to Bau Sau (Bo S0). We took a big truck out to the lake, and on the way saw a douc jump from one tree to another right on the side of the road! I need to have my camera out and ready for unexpected and amazing things like this! 

Once we arrived at the trailhead, we got suited up and began our walk. The hike is 5k, or a bit more than 3 miles. We started out slowly, looking at the trees and collecting samples of the leaves. Then we had to pick up the pace- it would've taken us several hours to get there if we had continued poking along! About halfway there we came upon a BIG tree! Oh my gosh! I have never seen a tree so big! I love the idea of big trees- a living thing that has been on Earth for hundreds of years, maybe untouched, but standing strong through endless changes to the world around it. One thing I must do is go visit the Redwood Forest in California. I think I would be moved to tears there! 

After the big, beautiful tree, we went pretty quickly out to the lake. Most of the trail was very wet and kind of slippery. There is a big boardwalk out to the ranger station, and a last little stretch of trail that has orange soil! I saw some deer tracks in the soil here, but those were the only signs of animals- no monkeys or gibbons. 

Once we arrived at the ranger station, which overlooks the lake, we had lunch. It was incredible! The rain clouds came in over the lake, sprinkling a bit as we ate. Just before we left, some larger, darker clouds were coming, and they brought a great deal of rain as we nearly ran the 5k back to the road.

Vat=leeches

Friday, September 19, 2008

I slept in a bit this morning- I have been feeling like I have a cold or allergies. I hope it is just a cold because I don't want to be allergic to the forest! :) After breakfast we went into the forest to walk one of Jonathan's transects.

At first I was really confused about this, so I will explain it. Jonathan's transect is a straight line in the forest. It is 250 meters long and 8 meters wide (4 meters on each side of a center line). Last year Jonathan set up 3 transects- he marked off the line and put tags on any trees in the area that were bigger than 10 cm in circumference. We walked one of the transects to see if any of the tags needed to be replaced, and to see if we could find all of the trees. We will walk the transects 2 times each month to observe the trees: do they have leaves? Do they have flowers? Are there any fruits in the trees? This will be very useful when we start to observe the monkeys. We will follow them, watch what they are eating, and then try to gather samples. The monkeys, called Black-shanked doucs, are pretty shy, so it will take some time for them to get used to us.

It is the rainy season right now, which means that the forest is really muddy, and there are LOTS of leeches. At first I was afraid of them. All I knew of leeches came from watching Stand By Me-scary little things that stick to you and suck your blood. YIKES! But they are not that bad. I had one on my wrist the first day in the forest and I didn't even know it was there! They are pretty interesting and I am kind of curious about them. What do they do when it's not wet? What is a leech's life cycle like? When I have Google again I will have to investigate!! If you want to see some, check out the video below!

du lich= traveling

So... I had this great idea for my next post- I wanted to put a map of Vietnam up with all the places we visited. The names would be links to some photos and cool information about each place...but it took me a while to just do the map, and I think the whole link-thing might be beyond my ablities at this point..so I will just put the map up, and then put some photos of each place. That way, you, my guests to my blog, will have something else to look at besides my "2 days to go" post.

We, Jonathan, Jackie-Mama, and P-ray, spent about 3 weeks traveling from Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam to Hanoi, in northern Vietnam. We mostly traveled by bus- sometimes short, comfortable trips; other times long, overnight, uncomfortable trips. We spent about 2 days in each place exploring the sights, sounds, smells, etc. There is a lot more I can say about each place, and I will, while you are enjoying photos of each location, in the order that we visited them. For right now, though, here's the map of where we went!