Author Archives: jkmarsch

This guy (the black one) was rescued from a hunter who had so badly damaged his hand – it was paralyzed. That didn’t slow him down one bit. As soon as we got to his cage, he started putting on a show. He swung around one handed and hung upside down. If we looked at a different monkey, he would start yelling at us- his lips would move wildly and his eyebrows would go all crazy! His lady friend (the yellowish-orange one) came over to see what was going on. She was so goofy looking that she was cute. She had a perfect little round afro.
While we were watching him, a caretaker walked by holding a baby monkey and we couldn’t take our eyes off him. All of a sudden- the monkey that was showing off knocked over and threw down his metal food bowl. Then he spread his legs and peed all over his food. What manners, fella’! I apologized if we offended him. He started yelling again so we walked away quickly. “I said good day, sir!”
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This was one of my favorite days. Rare monkeys live here that have been saved from hunters, held captive or illegally traded. The hope is to get them ready to go back in the wild. They have a successful breeding program, as well, so the monkeys must be happy here.

Jesse is always figuring things out and sometimes drawing a crowd in the process. This happens daily. When you travel, you need to have some sort of a plan but things change constantly (especially because of communication challenges.) You have to “be on your toes” at all times in Vietnam. We are getting a bit tired of the vulture like way people try to hustle you around here. Everyone is trying to make a buck. That being said- we have also depended on the kindness of strangers that has really paid off for us. (I think you might screw up your karma if you mess with a family of peace loving adventurers!) We’ve had some people treat us like family. One hotel owner’s dad drove us to the train station in his pajamas. What a wonderful world it would be if everyone treated everybody with kindness and respect.

This park has the oldest karst mountains in Asia. Above all the cave systems is an amazing tropical jungle. 90% of it is primary forest. It is so fresh smelling, green and perfect that it almost felt fake at times.
These are photos of Phong Nha Cave. We got on a boat with travelers from Israel, Ireland, Switzerland and Germany. There was a woman rower in the front of the boat that looked like she was about 18. She was incredibly strong. She first motored us down the river where we saw buffalo playing in the water and buffalo fighting (they were locking horns and the boys were pretty excited.)
Once you reach the cave, you can only explore about a kilometer of it, but the guidebook says that it will gradually open up as more tourists come. She rowed us to different caverns where we could get out and explore. This cave was amazing, but I thought Paradise Cave was much more tranquil. It had white lighting, which was pretty. The colored lighting in Phong Nha was a bit much. Paradise Cave was serene and other-worldy. We pretended like we had landed on Mars!

The steps were steep and there was goat poop everywhere, but it was a great climb. At the very top -after we were all hot and sweaty- a light misty rain started. It was perfect. There was a statue of a Buddha wearing a long robe up at the top. Wow.