This country has 13 endemic bird species and a large number of regional, Indochinese specialities. I had longing to go here for decades, and now it was finally going to happen. Most international birdtour operators has tours to Vietnam, but we decided to go with Bao Nguyen, one of the heads of Vietnamese Wildtours. We were a small group; us, three americans and a french. All had various skills and abilities in the field, but the atmosphere in the group was great, depite the fact that birding in Vietnam is challenging. In general birds are extremely shy outside the protected areas, and we had to rely a great deal on hides to get views and photos. Not really my cup of tee. So, for many reasons I felt that we ended up with a rather poor result, even if we bagged most of the top birds such as Bar-bellied Pitta, Siamese Fireback and Red-collared Woodpecker. Great stuff indeed!