Tonight, our guest Henry from Australia joined us for one of our most popular herping tours, Ho Chi Minh Herping: 1-Night Urban Tour.

I (Tung), picked up Henry from the bustling city centre of Ho Chi Minh City, renowned for being the busiest urban area in the entire of Vietnam. From there, we headed to our secret herping spot, a location known for its incredible (and surprising!) diversity of snakes as well as other reptiles and amphibians. It’s so great that such a rich abundance of biodiversity continues to persist near the heart of Vietnam’s biggest city. For our international guests, finding snakes among skyscrapers is both fascinating and a little hard to believe. What’s it like back in Australia?

Boom! We were off to a great start! Within the first 15 minutes of the tour, we encountered two Golden Tree Snake (Chrysopelea cf. ornata) resting on tall! About 30 minutes later, we spotted a juvenile Long-nosed Whip Snake (Ahaetulla fusca) with its distinctive elongated snout. As a young individual, it measured only around 15 cm, though adults can grow more than ten times longer, reaching up to 1.5 meters.

The final species of the night was the venomous Southern White-lipped Pit Viper (Trimeresurus albolabris fario). In total, over roughly three hours, we recorded eight individual snakes (three species) along with numerous common city-dwelling lizards, geckos, frogs, and toads living close to human settlements.

If this sounds like your kind of night out, come and join us for some epic and easy urban herping!