Beautiful Vietnam » Guide
Trekking in Kon Tum
  • | The Saigon Times |

The boys led us up a creek bed that was a doorway to the jungle. Almost immediately, signs of humanity disappeared and the green canopy shut out the sky.

The water carved a bath tub shaped hole out of this rock - Photo: Michael Smith

It had taken us nearly three hours to get to the spot from my hotel in Kon Tum. First we had to ride 40km along the road to Kon Ray District through land cleared for cassava growing to meet the first guide in Kon Brap Tu Village. That was interesting because in the village they were putting a new roof on the communal ruong house. Then we back tracked 10 km and there was more of a wait for the two local boys who actually knew the track.

The day before in Kon Tum, an old xe om driver, Johnny, had arranged for them to be our guides. When we got to the place, a gully between tree stump covered hillsides, I thought this can’t be it.

And then magically after a short walk we were inside, surrounded by nature, following the creek up a mountain, climbing over rocks and rotting logs. The sun glittered between the leaves above.

After a while we found a small waterfall, the roots of a tree clinging to its face. A little further up the water had carved a perfectly shaped bathtub out of the rock.

Crabs and lizards lived in the creek, the boys collected them to eat later. These guys definitely weren’t eco tourist guides but they knew a lot about the forest, as far as how to find animals and what plants to eat.

After a while we turned right up a steep bank and climbed upwards for several hundred meters. There they found a tree that had fruit they called wild strawberries and stopped to eat.

These bitter green fruit that were growing out of the tree’s trunk are favored by monkeys and the boys showed me signs the animals had been here recently. A lot of fruit peels lay around the forest floor.

They said the monkeys would be back in the evening. Soon we crossed over the top of the ridge and were on the way down. The canopy disappeared, the tree stumps and felled logs reappeared and we were back to where we’d parked the bikes.

Locals said in the past year massive tracts of Kon Tum forest have been cleared by the ethnic minority farmers to grow cassava as it has become profitable. However good patches of forest still exist further out and excellent treks and homestays are available from tour companies such as Highlands Eco Tours that has an office in Nguyen Hue street, the same street as Kon Tum’s famous wooden church.

Kon Tum is a friendly town and it’s not hard to meet locals who will take you to visit their families in ethnic minority villages. The Vinh Son 1 and 2 orphanages near the wooden church make friendly focal points. The warmth of the town people and surrounding villages makes Kon Tum a hard place to leave.

Both Gia Lai and Kon Tum provinces have great national parks (Kon Ka Kinh in Gia Lai and Chu Mon Ray and Ngoc Linh in Kon Tum) that are homes for gibbons and douc monkeys but unfortunately all are often off limits to tourists. Official permits are usually needed.

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