Driving up the winding road, picnic baskets in tow, it’s hard to get used to the stillness. Barely two hours from Hanoi, Tam Dao National Park feels like a different world. A light breeze rustles through the trees; except for the occasional passing car or motorbike, the mountain route is refreshingly empty.
Nestled in a valley between sweeping green hills, the town of Tam Dao provides an ideal base for exploring the park. Built by the French in the early 1900s, the town still retains a few traces of colonial influence: luxurious villas, a stone church that reaches gracefully into the blue sky. But today’s Tam Dao is unmistakably Vietnamese. At the local market you can find vendors selling bananas and roasted corn, surrounded by stalls that offer quick bites of sticky rice and the ubiquitous pho.
Skip the hotel restaurants that offer pricey western-style meals overlooking the mountains. Instead, bring picnic fixings from Hanoi and follow the road back along the edge of the cliff, where buildings give way to lush mountains and chickens wander freely up and down the curving hills. The air feels clean and invigorating, and the view is far better than the panorama offered by any restaurant.
After lunch, make the climb to Tay Thien Quoc Mau. Dedicated to a local mountain deity, the Buddhist temple sits on a hill several minutes’ walk from the town centre. Light an incense stick for good luck at the small pagoda before continuing up the grandiose stone staircase. If you’re feeling ambitious, follow the stone steps – about 1000 – to the television tower at the mountain’s summit. On clear days, the reward is a sweeping view of the national park, which spans mountainous land in three provinces.
In the Foothills
Before hitting the highway, make one last stop at the Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre, which provides a home to sun and moon bears saved from the illegal bear bile trade. Admission is free, and Animals Asia’s staff members, who speak both English and Vietnamese, make enthusiastic guides. Starting in January, visitors will be able to check the organisation’s website (www.animalsasia.org) for open house days; for now you should call ahead to make an appointment.
Guided by an Animals Asia staff member, visitors can come excitingly close to observing bears in their natural habitat. Tree-lined paths loop through a pleasant stretch of woods to the spacious enclosures where the bears spend their daylight hours.
Although the bamboo platforms they’re playing on seem more like playground equipment than the logs bears might scramble up in the forest, they serve a valuable purpose, explains Annemarie Weegenaar, who heads the vet and bear team at the rescue centre.
The platforms mimic the trees the animals are used to climbing and enable the naturally solitary animals to get away from other bears.
Weegenaar takes pains to make clear that the bears aren’t just part of a display. Most of the animals at the rescue centre have spent most of their lives on bile farms, though the word ‘farm’, with its bucolic connotations, hardly does justice to the gruesome conditions the bears are forced
to endure.
“When they get here, a lot of these bears are in such poor condition you can actually count their ribs,” Weegenaar says. She points to a large bear at the back of one enclosure. “This is Zebedee. He was kept in someone’s kitchen with no natural light, and he was fed an awful diet.
When he came to us, his teeth were mostly missing.” She gestures proudly. “Now he’s integrated into a group of 19 other bears.”
Getting there
Tam Dao is 85km from Hanoi. Driving is the most direct way to get there, as there is no public transportation to the park. Buses from Hanoi’s My Dinh station stop in Vinh Yen, where you can find a taxi to bring you to Tam Dao (about 30km).
The Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre is located at the edge of the park, about 13km from town.