Monkey Island...

This weekend, we made a little company trip to a near island called Can Gio, an island formed, where the Saigon river hits the sea.
The main residents of this island, after humans of course, are monkeys. That's why it is called monkey island as well. The main park is called Lam Vien Can Gio, where you can see a beautiful mangrove forest, salt walter crocodiles and of course the monkeys.  It's around 2 hours drive from Ho Chi Minh City.

You have to be aware of the monkey, as they steal whatever they can. So hold on to your belongings, there shouldn't be anything loose on you. First victim was Trinh, she wore a cap, and it was gone after less than a minute after getting off the car. We got the cap back, but only in exchange for some food for the thief. Fortunately we were a bit more cautious afterwards and no other posessions have been missing again.
You can buy peanuts for the monkeys, and there you have to be even more careful, as the monkeys are watching and trying to steal the peanuts from your hands.

The forest there is really beautiful, and you can walk a bit through it.

My ladies had quite some fun there:

Then of course there are the crocodiles, which you can feed with eels:

After the monkey experience we headed a bit further south to the beach...

Well, actually it is not as nice as the above picture. The beach is full of garbage, the sand is dirty, and the water doesn't seem to be clean either.

Still, mostly locals come here for a daytrip, to relax from the city. And my ladies had some fun here as well.

Next to the beach there are restaurants and a market, where they sell fresh seafood.

It was really a nice trip, however sad to see how bad the beach was polluted. And a symbol for the general pollution in Vietnam. Since one week we have smog in Ho Chi Minh City, the worst ever apparently, and it is said to be coming from the burning forests in Indonesia. I think this is only half the truth.