Monkey Island and the Mangrove Forest

Monkey news

I went on another day trip on Friday 25th May to a place called Monkey Island with an additional trip to a mangrove forest. I wanted to go on the trip as I thought it would be cool to go to an Island called 'Monkey Island' - I wasn't that interested in the Mangrove forest and in all honestly had no idea what one was. The trip lasted the whole day and took us on a coach trip about three hours south of Ho Chi Minh City.

Mangrove Forest

I had images of getting on a little boat and going across some water to a nice tropical island that had thousands of monkeys on it, however the reality was very different. The Island was only separated from the mainland by a few meters of water which we got to by a bridge which if you looked down you'd probably not even noticed you crossed. We arrived at this place on our coach and went to this park were there were many be a few hundred monkeys. It was pretty cool feeding the monkeys and watching them try to nick peoples stuff.

Mangrove Forest

The more impressive thing was the mangrove forest. Its basically low lying land making it pure mud with trees (mangroves) growing out of it. It also has lots of muddy water ways that you can get down in a boat. We took a boat ride down these water ways through the forest to a place where the VC used to hide in the war. They spent a total of 10 years there and used to make attacks on the Americans back in HCMC.

At a VC style camp in the mangrove forest

It also used to have loads of crocodiles (which have all been relocated to a crocodile farm). The Americans didn't want to go in after the VC (I don't blame them) so as usual just bombed it instead. Lots of the VC were eaten by crocodiles. The boat ride was great fun (see the video below) and I'm told if you stay at this place that at around 7pm you'll open your mouth and be able to eat thousands of mosquitoes.

It was a nice day out and I was pleasantly surprised by the mangrove forest. 'm off to a place called Mu Nui next week with my school, ILA for an annual outing / team bonding session. It's supposed to be a nice beach place.