Plan Your Trip Outdoor Adventures - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Northern Thailand - page 77

Wildlife-Watching
While wildlife-spotting may not be quite as straightforward as in the Serengeti, it is still
possible to have some world-class encounters in the Mekong region.
You can lean more about gibbon behaviour with a dawn trek to a habituated family in
Cat Tien National Park ( Click here ) , Vietnam. Listen to the forest slowly come alive with
their calls before watching the family go about their everyday lives.
And the Veun Sai-Siem Pang Conservation Area ( Click here ) in Cambodia's Ratana-
kiri Province is home to several hundred northern buff-cheeked gibbons, a species that was
only discovered in 2010. Sleep in the jungle and awake before dawn to see and hear semi-
habituated families.
At Thailand's remote Khao Yai National Park ( Click here ) , the massive jungle is home
to one of the world's largest monsoon forests. Here you can track shy wildlife, including
more than 200 elephants, or hike to hidden waterfalls.
You can learn about the life of the Laotian elephant at the superb Elephant Conservation
Center (ECC; 020-2302 5210; www.elephantconservationcenter.com ; 1-day visit US$60, 3-day experi-
ence US$175, 6-day ecoexperience US$399) , near Sainyabuli . Walk with the elephants, learn the
art of the mahout and see young jumbos in the nursery. At the Elephant Valley Project
( Click here ) in Cambodia's Mondulkiri , you can see these majestic animals in their natural
environment by 'walking with the herd' in lush jungles.
Off land, the freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin is one of the rarest mammals on earth, with
fewer than 100 inhabiting stretches of the Mekong. Kayak with a small pod on the
Lao‒Cambodia border, or further south near Kratie ( Click here ) , northeast Cambodia.