This place combines with Nam Can mangrove forest to form two biosphere reserves of the world, one is freshwater mangrove forest and the other is mangrove forest. Therefore, it is common for U Minh Ha to be filled with exotic flowers.
The cajuput tree is the owner of the U Minh Ha freshwater forest ecosystem. The role of cajuput is huge, from creating forests - the habitation space of hundreds of animals, to the muddy coal soil and water with a characteristic brown-red color as mentioned in the previous period.
According to figures provided by the U Minh Ha National Park Management Board, the total area of cajuput forest here is about 35,000 hectares, of which 8,256 hectares are in the core area of U Minh Ha National Park. When we first set foot here, we could not help but be overwhelmed by the vastness of this cajuput forest.
The dense cajuput forest of more than 8,000 hectares of cajuput forest is home to countless wild animals such as monkeys, wild boars, monkeys, monkeys, reptiles, snake, turtles, pangolins... because this is an ideal environment for rare wild animals to live and grow.
In particular, this place is also a haven for many precious birds such as lotus and crab, this is a large bird with wings over 1m, weighing tens of thousands of kg. The land is healthy for birds to nest, so the cajuput forest has created a safe shelter, rich in food for birds to return to.
The cajuput tree blooms in thousands of flowers to become a food source for honey bees. Therefore, it will be a big problem if not mentioning the famous tea tree honey of U Minh Ha forest, the pure honey and yellow like orange juice, especially the fragrant aroma of tea tree, bringing high nutritional value to health.
That is the "forest" of U Minh Ha National Park, now we are exploring the "sweetwater-flooded" area with countless strange things that make people fall in love with this place. This is the point that created the legends about the U Minh forest for Ba Phi and the stories that were as fabricated and fabricated as real.
U Minh Ha is a sweetener area, so it is rich in freshwater products. Under the red-brown water created by the sediment of cadam and cajuput leaves, we can count about 60 freshwater fish and brackish water fish, including fish that " attack the branches" such as snakehead fish, perch, snakehead fish.
Long before I was able to access U Minh forest, I had read and heard about the story of fish, turtles, and snake in this land that were not "in the open air" but also "in the open air" in the pages of books of Doan Gioi or Son Nam, and then the story of Uncle Ba Phi.
The snakehead fish live in the canals in the cajuput forest, each one weighs five or five, half a bird is normal. But now, there are not many more crab relatives, however, there are still many big ones like calves. "Just enough to make them eat until they are scared," Mr. Dung - an officer of U Minh Ha National Park following the group - enthusiastically told.
According to Mr. Duong, the best snakehead fish variety in the U Minh Ha cajuput forest is from October to January. Because this is the rainy season, the water level at the foot of the forest rises the highest, thanks to which the fish grow, making the snakehead fish's food source abundant. New non-fat snakehead fish.
Snakehead fish is a delicious dish, but nothing like the underground grilled dish from the time of our ancestors when they opened the land and cleared the forest. Even Ba Phi was instructed: "The snakehead fish grilled with coal, eaten with grass, firecrackers, and choai shoots, even the tigers have to stand outside the hut to beg".
field snakehead fish may not be too impressed by strangers about their wild natural appearance when compared to domestic snakehead fish, but the eel and snakehead fish of the cajuput forest are different. They make people question the varieties called field eels or field carp outside.
The red-brown water system of the cajuput forest is very rich in nutrients, so it has helped the creatures living here develop extremely well, with flavors and quality at a level that is completely "equal" to the others. The eel is as big as an adult's wrist, weighing 1-2 kg, has golden skin, and is as flexible and crispy as a jellyfish and sweet.
U Minh Ha field eel is cooked in many delicious rustic dishes, such as wellow eel porridge, sour eel, fish sauce eel, stir-fried eel with chili lemongrass... especially the hot male-leafed eel with delicious flavor from the eel meat, both fatty and fatty from coconut milk and mixed with the sweet and bitter taste of the male leaves.
The giant catfish is the size of a teenager's hand, the catfish, the sturgeon with sweet meat and the aroma of tea tree luffa will make the top U Minh fish sauce. This is a typical dish from the time of the U Minh Ha forest land opening. The main ingredients of the fish sauce hotpot are fish sauce, freshwater fish and local wild vegetables such as choai shoots, water spinach, coconut, spinach, engine, young banana flowers, water spinach...
That afternoon, we were treated the whole U Minh cajuput forest, from the clean air of the cajuput essential oil, to the aquatic species growing in the waterline of red-brown water, water stools from the cajuput and the warm humanity of U Minh Ha National Park.
It is a pity that if there were, it would be a pity not to see the tiger lying between two trunks, then using its tail to wade through the canal to catch snakehead fish like Mr. Ba Phi. And perhaps this half-fictional, half-real old man just spoke a word to praise his lands U Minh forest!
