We just finished a massive 3-Day Bach Ma Primate & Mammal Watching Tour. It was led by me (Thanh) with our expert driver Vu and two guests from Australia (Maddy and Chase), who we recently married and decided to make wildlife in Vietnam their sweet honeymoon. I’m so happy to be leading a trip for them on such a special occasion.

The trip followed our normal itinerary and had a number of key target species for Maddy such as Civets, Pygmy Slow Loris, Red-Shanked Douc Langur, Macaques, Yellow-throated Marten and Northern Yellow-Cheeked Gibbon. This is a list that includes many of the usual highlight species of Bach Ma National Park. With so many key species, we needed to calculate the time and itineraries carefully in order to have the best chance of archieving our targets.

Day one started early with a 6:00am pick up. After we helped with luggage and some quick hellos, we warmed up the day with some Vietnamese coffee and baguettes (Banh mi!). Salted Coffee is always the first option that I like to recommend to guests. With coffee organised, we immediately headed straight to Bach Ma National Park, having breakfast and coffee along the way.

After arriving, we got out of the car, stretched, visited the restrooms and bought our park tickets. We started the day by wandering around the lowland areas surrounding the head office. These gardens have some nice big, tall trees and are a great place for Cambodian Striped Squirrel and Pallas’s Squirrel. Today went as planned! We got our very first Pallas’s Squirrel fleeing between trees and bushes after a quiet fifteen minutes searching. Then, after just a few more minutes, we got an Asian Red-cheeked Squirrel accidentally whilst walking back to the car.

It was time to start heading up the hill. Almost immediately, we found a pair of Cambodian Striped Squirrel only a few minutes after the gate. Relatively small and distinctive with those white stripes on the back, make them a little cute squirrel! They have special bilateral symmetry which means they have symmetrical body, similar in both sides. As it normally goes, when they figured out we were looking at them, they quickly jumped from tree to tree and disappeared within seconds. You have to be quick!

We continued our trip hoping to find a Javan Mongoose passing by the road. The weather was getting warmer and warmer. As we search we enjoyed the pines and bird species like Greater Racket-tailed Drongo, Pin-striped Tit-Babbler, Oriental Honey Buzzard, Crested Serpent Eagle and a bonus Gia Lai Pricklenape.

Despite our efforts, we had to give up on the mongoose for now and save up our time to drive up hill and for a more important mission, searching for the Northern Yellow-cheeked Gibbon.

We had a nice drive of breathtaking views and mountain breezes. Sadly, when we reached to the mid-elevation where Black Dipterocarp forest begins, it was starting to get foggy and the vision wasn’t good enough to see anything from distance. This meant no Northern Yellow-cheeked Gibbon for today.

We decided to park the car and started for a walk with hope that the fog would drift away. Though the view wasn’t that great, Maddy and Chase still enjoyed the nice cool atmosphere and rocky waterfalls along the track. Soon we continue to the Do Quyen Restaurant, checked into accommodation and had an early lunch. Meanwhile, we also got a good views of colourful Necklaced Barbet and Orange-bellied Leafbird.

It was drizzling and foggy by the time we finished lunch, cool temperature, so time to take a break and get a good nap and get ready for the dusk and long night.

It was 3:30PM when we started taking a hike uphill toward the summit looking for Black Giant Squirrel and Red-shanked Douc Langur. My plan was to go up for 90mins and return around dusk. This is the best time to get Annamese Muntjac, Silver Pheasant and Impressed Tortoise, very popular targets.

Regardless of the foggy vision, right away we got our first Maritime Stripe Squirrel almost immediately after we started. A great start and our fourth squirrel species for the day.

It was quiet, with less activity than normal under this kind of weather. We still got Pallas’s Squirrel and after a quick break towards the summit, we continued to one of our douc spots. This proved to be a good plan.

There was a big family of Red-shanked Douc Langur eating in the fog. Absolutely stunning and a bit magical in the mist. Despite the view, Maddy and Chase enjoyed seeing their first critically endangered primates. We tried to keep the distance and be quiet, used the binoculars to have a good view of them. There were around 15 of them (even babies clinging to the mom’s belly) which is a pretty much typical family of doucs in this part of Bach Ma.

After a bit, the doucs detected us and started retreating through the forest, with spectacular jumps from tree to tree. Luckily, we still had some great binocular views and got some good photos with telephoto lenses. After a bit of quiet afternoon, we were super happy and it was worth the walk up. Unfortunately, dusk didn’t bring us much extra in the rain and fog.

On dusk, we had traditional Vietnamese meals, got our energy back and were ready for some spotlighting. Tonight, we were going to start from the accommodation and descend to some of our main waterfall locations, aiming for muntjacs, civets, lorises and more. As a warm up, we got a Mountain Scops Owl just a few steps from the restaurant.

We all had our own torches so work together on different parts of the trail. After 15mins, I spot my first eyeshine from a distance away and hidden behind the trees. At first, I thought it was a civet, but then I was the body and the tail. Oh my god! It’s an Annamite Muntjac, one of our top targets! We got everyones attention quickly. Big eyeshine, the head and the tail. The body looming behind the trees. Even though it was from distance and high up on the hill, we still had a very good look at this very rare deer. Maddy helped me to keep the torch stable whilst I prepared my camera, but as it normally happens, the Muntjac disappeared into the forest. A very very good start!

Back on the trail, we were going quietly trying not to make any sounds. Soon we got our first Indochinese Palm Civet with a stunning view and very close! The civet was frozen in the torch light, so we had time to watch it in detail and see it very well. Brilliant!

While we were checking out along the side of the trail, Vu (our dedicated driver and very passionate wildlife photographer himself) he suddenly called for us to come quickly. He had found one of our most rarely seen species, an Asian Brush-tailed Porcupine (Atherurus macrourus), foraging along the stream, what a good spot!

This is a pretty rare Hystricidae species and is very hard to see everywhere in Vietnam. After this, we kept going to the end of the trails but didn’t see much more. Maybe the rain and fog made the animals less active than usual. But despite this, we had seen some incredibly rare species, so we went to bed late and happy.

The second day morning was unfortunately more foggy and rainy than we hoped. Over breakfast, I spoke to the rangers and they said the vision was good on their way travelling up the hill. So right away we jumped in the car to go and search for the Northern Yellow-cheeked Gibbon. We tried hard as we always do but the gibbons did not show. Unfortunately this species sometimes has periods where they are very difficult to see and these last few weeks they have been trickier than normal.

Instead, we saw another good view of Red-shanked Douc Langur eating leaves in the canopy. On our walk, we enjoyed Indochinese Yuhina, Mountain Fulvetta, Dark-necked Tailorbird and more.

Now it was time to in search of bats! So we visited the old tunnel and mineshafts that have been left from the way. This is a favourite spot of many microbat and rodent species. After getting our torches and masks, we headed up the hill and took a short hike to the spot. As always, we use a red-light torch as to cause minimal disturbance. As we reached the spot, we found a nice healthy group of around 40-50~ bats. We turned the lights right down and were able to get some great views of Intermediate Horseshoe Bat, recording videos and photos.

As we were working on the bats, Maddy suddenly spotted eyeshine from the end of the tunnel moving towards us. It was a pair of Small-toothed Ferret Badger, brilliant! I aks everyone to stay still, so we didn’t scare them. They acted like we weren’t there, so we got  good shots on camera too! After a bit, we decided to leave the bats and the badgers and move back towards the entrance. With such good results, everyone got a big high-five! After ringing the big bell at the top of the summit, we returned to enjoy our lunch.

Everyone agreed that we should have good rest in the afternoon particularly as the weather was bad and we could get fully prepared for a longer night. During nap time, I still came out and checked the weather every hour. After a break, we met up at the restaurant. Chase came back to villa to get his rain jacket. Before he had gone to far, he came back with excitement all over his face. “Thanh! Come! Come quickly!” We knew it had to be something good!

Me, Vu and Maddy ran fast right towards him and oh my gosh, it was an Impressed Tortoise (Marouria Impressa)! In the rain, this amazing animal was passing through the garden. Maddy was amazed by our reactions as I tried to explain to her and Chase just how hard it is to see this species. After many photos, we just stood back and enjoyed the moment, totally magical.

As always on our mammal tours, we were planning to have a long night. Unfortunately, it was raining very heavily, so we had to start later than expected. Before going to the summit, we tried to again along the trail that we did the night before and it was absolutely worth it! We found a Pygmy Slow Loris right in the middle of the trail on a dead tree! It was seemed to have been crossing the path and then froze in our torch light. What a view, so close that we could see its fur, finger, bright eyeshine and face, all without binoculards. A cute almost alien species, is how we describe it sometimes! A Loris species is always a big highlight for any mammal trip.

Our third day was the only sunny day we had this trip. We woke up to breathtaking views and fresh air. As usually, we quickly drove down hill after waking up to check out for the Northern Yellow-cheeked Gibbon but instead found many many Red Shanked Douc Langur (about 35 animals across 5 groups). We were hiking along the trail while listening for the gibbons songs but barely got any. After 2 hours we gave up and drove back to the restaurant for a coffee and breakfast, enjoy the sun.

In the afternoon, we decided to return to Da Nang by visiting Son Tra Nature Reserve as Maddy and Chase wanted to have a closer look at the Red-shanked Douc Langur and try for Javan Mangoose before transferring to Hoi An. As always, we had a wonderful time at Son Tra and saw many doucs and took many photos.

We finished our 3-day mammal tour. And even though the weather wasn’t perfect, we still had some incredibly highlight species though the overall count was down. We wish Maddy and Chase the best for their honeymoon and hope to welcome them back in the future!

Want to book your own Bach Ma Primates & Mammal tour? You can learn more about here: https://nextcontinenttours.com/bach-ma-3-day-primates-mammals-tour/.
For information about our Vietnam-wide Mammal & Primate Tours, please visit: https://nextcontinenttours.com/vietnam-mammal-tours

SPECIES LIST:

1. Red-shanked Douc Langur (Pygathrix nemaeus)
2. Pygmy Slow Loris (Xanthonycticebus pygmaeus)
3. Annamite Muntjac (Muntiacus truongsonensis)
4. Intermediate Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus affinis)
5. Pallas’s Squirrel (Callosciurus erythraeus)
6. Asian Red-cheeked Squirrel (Dremomys rufigenis)
7. Cambodian Striped Squirrel (Tamiops rodolphii)
8. Maritime Striped Squirrel (Tamiops maritimus)
9. Asian Brush-tailed Porcupine (Atherurus macrourus)
10. Indochinese Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus)
11. Small-toothed Ferret Badger (Melogale moschata)