Hiking ‘Monkey Mountain’ in Da Nang, Vietnam, in search of the most beautiful primate

The parkland’s most famous resident is its 67-metre-tall Lady Buddha, or the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin. Finished in 2010, the statue at the Linh Ung Pagoda has become a tourist attraction, but few visitors explore the jungle and wildlife beyond the Buddhist site.

This is partly intentional. Son Tra does not actually have many proper hiking trails, in part to protect its animals, including more than 100 types of birds, countless butterflies, deer, snakes, macaques and beautiful but endangered red-shanked douc langurs. Of the roughly 3,000 of these herbivorous primates left in the world, about 2,000 of them live on the Son Tra Peninsula. They are Son Tra’s main attraction for animal lovers.

For our expedition around “Monkey Mountain”, which is what the Americans called Son Tra and the name the locals have since adopted, we are led by a guide from Next Continent, a wildlife consultancy and nature tourism specialist in Vietnam.