Junia's first backpacking: Chuc mung giang sinh!

After a week in this lovely country I can only remember one word - thank you - [köm ööön]. The memory trick to remember it is to think of the song “come on Eileen”, but adding a more nasal touch. Vietnamese is a really difficult language, with a lot of added fjongs to the Latin letters, making it difficult to read out as well. As the general level of English is rather low we are extremely thankful of the app Grab, Vietnamese Uber, which makes it super smooth to travel around - no discussion about the price or difficulties in communication, and average waiting time 2 min.

Our first few days in Saigon - which is what most locals call Ho Chi Minh City - were spent walking around in 30 degrees, drinking fantastic fruit juices, visiting the war museum (where we needed to give up after half, it was just too horrible), and negotiating at the market. We also had a day trip to the Mekong delta with cycling and kayaking - really nice!

Yesterday we left the big city and went to the national park Cat Tien, where most animals between elephants and pythons can be found. Today’s hike to the crocodile lake rewarded us with beautiful scenery, and in the cycling in the evening we saw quite a few deer and peacocks.

The guest book in the independence hall - or reunification palace.

It’s a tough job to visit the market…

Evening wildlife spotting

“Emma” outside our local shopping center (named after our Grab driver pointed out eMart.) Big things outside shopping centres seems to be very popular photo shoot places here.