Blood Suckers

Day 63: Cat Tien National Park (VN). If you're anything like me, it doesn't matter how long you go away for, be it a weekend or a month I always forget to take something. Usually it's leaving my glasses on the kitchen table or forgetting to pack my handkerchief. But today, in Cat Tien National Park I realised that we didn't have any leech socks. What were we going to do?

The truth of the matter was, before arriving here, I didn't even know what leech socks were, but as we set off on our 10km hike to Crocodile Lake the Ranger insisted we wear some (fortunately for us, we managed to rent a pair at the park office). And this wasn't some kind of namby-panbyism. Two miles into our hike through the dense, moist jungle both both Karen and I had a number of the little suckers trying to bite through our boots and protective leggings to get the our tasty warm blood!

For me, with my irrational fear of spiders and stinging insects this really was life on the edge! The jungle was teaming with every form of life you could possibly imagine. Under every stone, a palm sized arachnid. Wasps the size of dragonflies and malaria infested mosquito's at every turn -all desperately wanting us both for lunch.

But you know, I wouldn't have missed this for the world. Even reaching the lake, watching pied kingfishers and ospreys hunt for food, I was actively looking forward to the walk back through the jungle: To feel the heat and the humidity. To smell the smells. To hear the reverberating jungle chorus. To witness nature's true glory.

Chatting to the Ranger by the lake, we received an interesting lesson on perception. Whilst discussing the incessant noise of the cicada's (huge locust like bugs), the Ranger had told us how good they were to eat. “Do you cook them first?”, Karen enquired with interest. The Ranger looked at us with total disgust, “Absolutely! No one would eat raw cicada's!”. Proving that whether something feels acceptable or not depends on your perception of what 'normality' is in the first place!

Day 63: Total Mileage to Date: 13,202: Number of Time Zones: 10; Number of Countries Visited: 9; Number of Transport Modes Used: 32, Maximum Temperature Encountered: +31C, Minimum Temperature Encountered: -32C.