Cat Tien National Park

Cat Tien National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Cat Tien is the lowland rainforest park three to four hours north-east of Ho Chi Minh City on the road to Dalat, and it is sold from both as one-, two- and three-day tours: the day trips from the city leave at six, cross the Dong Nai river on the park's ferry by nine, do a jeep or bicycle trip to the Crocodile Lake trailhead and a walk, and return in the evening, which is a long day for a few hours of forest; the two-day versions stay in the park's guesthouses or the lodges across the river, add the night safari in an open truck along the grasslands for the deer, the civets and the gaur, the dawn walk for the gibbons and the primate rescue centre on the island, and are the way to see the park. The three-day tours combine Cat Tien with Dalat, stopping at the park between the city and the hills.

The activities inside are booked at the park headquarters after the ferry: the guides for the trails, the jeep to the Crocodile Lake trail and the night drive, the boat on the river, the bicycles for the roads and the Dao Tien primate centre's tours; the park fee and the ferry are paid at the gate and included by the operators. The car-hire tours with a driver from the city are the private version. The Ta Lai longhouse and the Ma and Stieng villages on the park's edge are the community stays. Independent visitors take the bus towards Dalat, get off at the Cat Tien junction and a motorbike taxi to the ferry, and stay in the park's rooms or the lodges at the river; the trails need a park guide beyond the short loops.

Visiting Cat Tien National Park: what you will see

The park was protected in 1978 and united in 1998 from three sectors, and it covers about 720 square kilometres of lowland tropical forest, bamboo, grassland and wetland along the Dong Nai river, 150 kilometres north of Ho Chi Minh City, in a biosphere reserve since 2011 and one of the largest areas of lowland forest left in Vietnam, which the war's defoliants and the logging of the 1980s cut into but did not destroy. Its fame was the Javan rhinoceros, whose last mainland population survived in the Cat Loc sector until the final animal was found shot in 2010, a loss the park carries; its wealth now is the rest. The Nam Cat Tien sector, where the visitors go, has the trails from the headquarters through forest of giant tung and dipterocarp trees, with the buttress roots and the strangler figs of the interpretive walks, to the Crocodile Lake, Bau Sau, a wetland in the forest with Siamese crocodiles reintroduced in the 2000s, a ranger station and the chance of the gaur and the sambar at the water at dusk;

the grasslands along the park road are the night safari's country, with the deer, the wild boar, the civets and the porcupines in the spotlight and the gaur herds on the edges. The Dao Tien primate centre on an island in the river rehabilitates the golden-cheeked and the pygmy loris and the black-shanked douc, and the gibbons that were released call from the forest at dawn on the gibbon trek. The park has 350 bird species, with the orange-necked partridge, the green peafowl, the Siamese fireback and the great hornbill, elephants in the north, sun bears, leopards and the clouded leopard in secret, and 1,600 plant species with the Rafflesia among them. The Cat Tien archaeological site on the river's north bank, a Hindu temple complex of the fourth to ninth centuries, and the Ma and Stieng villages of Ta Lai are the park's human side.

Cat Tien National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from about 6 am to 6 pm at the ferry, with the night safaris from 7 pm and the overnight stays inside the park. The dry season from December to April is the best for the trails, the Crocodile Lake and the animals at the water, with the cool months of December and January the most pleasant; the rains from May to November make the trails muddy and the leeches busy, close the lake trail in the floods and green the forest, with the birds and the butterflies at their best in the early rains. The dawn and the night are the animals' hours. Allow two days and a night. Ho Chi Minh City is three to four hours south, Dalat three hours north, and Mui Ne's coast is east.