Bach Ma National Park

My landlady organises a Xe Om for me in the morning to the Bach Ma National Park, 40 km away. The French feudal lords built almost 150 villas here within 10 years from 1932 as a summer retreat in the mountains. Just 20 kilometres from the sea, the peaks rise up to 1500 metres. Steep mountains, green rainforest, shrouded in high clouds.

Entry is almost free. But I have problems getting to the summit. There are two options: walk 16km through tropical rainforests in the midday heat, or try the national park minibus. 20 euros for 9 people. But Bach Ma is quite unknown, and it’s low season: I am officially confirmed as the only guest in the 22,000 hectare national park.

I sit next to the entrance for a while and try to stop one of the two motorbikes passing by. I can’t. I have to walk. After a kilometre, the same rider comes by again and offers me a ride to the summit for four euros. I jump on immediately. He explains to me that only the national park buses are allowed to transport visitors. That’s why he didn’t stop at the bottom.

The ascent is spectacular. A narrow 75-year-old tarred road clings to the steep slopes. Sometimes it has lost its grip and half of it has disappeared. It crosses waterfalls every hundred metres. We drive through huge swarms of butterflies in all colours. At an altitude of around 1000 metres and 6 km before our destination, the motorbike stalls due to a lack of air, the steepness of the road and our weight.

Not too bad, I walk the rest. Only now do I realise how loud the whole of Vietnam has been so far. You can always hear something, and sometimes a bush horn blows your eardrums to the back of your cerebellum. I can’t hear anything up here. Nothing, just birds, bees, cicadas and water. Old French colonial villas rotting in the rainforest. I take a deep breath.

The altitude combined with 70% humidity is pretty tough. After an hour, I arrive at the first villa soaking wet. Nobody there, everything is closed. I walk on. An hour later, I’m almost at the summit. Dilapidated colonial villas and a hotel. The rooms are meanly expensive, the landlord sends me further down again.

Before that, I hike for another hour to the summit of Bach Ma. A US helicopter post led to fierce fighting in the whole region. There are still many unexploded bombs lying around, and on some slopes the non-existent vegetation screams “Agent Orange is nasty!”.

Unfortunately, everything is covered in clouds. I have a complete whiteout at all the viewpoints. I follow an old circular route through the rainforest for 3 kilometres back to the National Park Guesthouse.

They say the French built all this. It looks more like a slave path, built by the Vietnamese for rich effeminate colonial masters. New trees have taken root in the centre of the old path and there are bears, wild boars and tigers in the forests around it again.

My guesthouse is built on the ruins of Bao Dai’s summer residence. Once there, I take a short rest and then set off without my heavy rucksack to the Five Lakes, 5 cascading waterfalls in a narrow, steep valley. Once I reach the bottom, I’m exhausted and happy, but I’m exhausted again at the top. While showering, I discover a huge leech on my leg. I tear it off. The wound bleeds forever. Enough fun for today.