Nin Bhin & Leeches

October 5th to 10th, 2025

paddle on the river

When the bike tour ended, we needed some quiet days to recover. Hanoi felt too busy for a rest, so we took a short bus to the countryside of Nin Bhin.

Once I’d slept the food poisoning off, we went to explore a nearby national park. We decided to do a two hour hike in the jungle with the aim of admiring a thousand year old tree and a cool sounding “cave of prehistoric man.”

The first part of this hike was really fun, we moved quickly and felt like Indiana Jones. I’d watched so many movies and documentaries set in the jungle, and so it was exciting to experience a little piece of it firsthand. The trees and the ferns were gigantic, like Jurassic Park sans dinosaur.

The trail was meant to be a loop, but due to the typhoon felling some trees across the trail everyone was turning back mid-way and recommending us to do the same as the path ahead was supposedly too difficult. So of course me and Joel decided to complete the loop.

About an hour in, after clambering over several trees and becoming quite alone in this part of the jungle, I saw a very nasty looking spider sitting in a web at eye level. I kept my cool and used a branch to swipe it out of the way, but was on edge after that in case I missed the next web and got a spider to the face. Soon after we walked into a patch of very loud bug chirping, without being able to see a single bug - before everything went ominously silent. We sped up a little, our eyes scanning the treetops as we listened to the sounds of birds and potentially a monkey without being able to see them. I felt like an irritating speck in the eye of an ancient ecosystem that I didn’t understand or belong to, and it was watching me.

A little while later, a stone got lodged in my boot. So we stopped properly for the first time to dislodge it, when I noticed a little crab on the path.

I called Joel over to “take a look at this neat jungle crab!!” Joel comes over, says "hold still!" and starts whacking my boot with his foot. My mind jumps back to the creepy spider, and I try not to panic as I ask “what is it???!!” Joel stays ominously silent and keeps kicking.

I twist around to try and see what's going on - and to my horror, spot something much worse than a spider - multiple leeches were whipping up the sides of my boots, moving freakishly fast towards my ankles.

I would like to think I’m calm under pressure, but in that moment it all became too much. I yanked my boot off and started shouting “GET IT OFF ME!!! GET IT OFFFFF” while hopping around on one foot, frantically trying to shake the leeches off (so I didn't have to touch them) while Joel was yelling “JUST HOLD STILL.” Those suckers can really hang on!! Once Joel caught hold of me, he lifted my sock away from my skin and we flicked the leeches off. My vision tunnelled - the foliage next to the path was crawling with leeches, and they all seemed to be beelining towards us. 

I tried not to hyperventilate while we double checked our ankles for leeches and became a mosquito buffet. Our wide eyes met with a silent, mutual question:

The next hour was spent careening through the undergrowth, crashing over streams and jumping over logs in undignified but honest flight.

We finally made it back to our scooter, jumped on, and zoomed away. Just as I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “I’m so glad that’s over!” The scooter swerved to the left and a fat leech flew past my ear as Joel ripped it off his ankle.

After that, the drive back was subdued while we reconsidered our life choices. At the hotel, we carefully inspected our legs again - just in case. Turns out Joel got no less than six(!!) leech bites up his legs. I had zero and I’ve never been so thankful to long socks in my life!

Lessons learned:

1. I’m not a jungle woman. You are not a jungle person. We’re just not made for it!

2. You can’t fight the jungle - you flee.

3. Better yet, don't go in there in the first place.

4. Wear long socks.

   
   

Overall.....I wouldn’t recommend Nin Bhin (Joel does not agree with me but you can ask him about that).