A young man’s “pet” club has become very popular with people who love pets.

 

Located in Kham Thien Street, it looks like a “dim-light café” (a dark place for prostitution).

 

In fact, it is a mini zoo with walls and decorations made from wood and wild plants that make visitors feel like entering a small forest.

 

Some are really shocked to see “pets” inside the glass-covered holes in the walls.

 

They are not cats or dogs but are big lizards, pythons, poisonous Tarantula spiders, salamanders and iguanas from Australia, South America and Africa.

 

The owner of the Pet Club is Nguyen Minh Nghia, 28, who graduated from the Mining and Geology University but is now a stockbroker.

 

He loves animals, especially reptiles, and his friends call him “Nghia Salamander”.

 

“I have loved animals since I was a little boy. I began raising reptiles five years ago, when a friend asked me to feed his salamanders as he was too preoccupied with his own business to take care of them,” Nghia says.

 

In the following years, Nghia visited Thailand, Singapore, Australia and China to collect snakes and salamanders.

 

“Today, I have a collection of 17 reptiles and they are my close friends.”

 

“These pets are easy to feed,” he says. “But for beginners, it is not a walk in the park. You have to read a lot of material to learn how to raise reptiles.”

 

Nghia says he has chosen these reptiles that are suited to the climate and environment in Vietnam.

 

“To keep them alive here, I’ve got to study a lot about their living environment,” says Nghia.

 

After being treated for 6-8 months, he says, the reptiles have become tame and harmless.

 

“One of the secrets is you should have a knack of holding the reptile tenderly in your hands, so it will not react in fear.”

 

“The cafe is always dim, because many reptiles do not like the light.”

 

To allow visitors to watch these strange animals, Nghia has spent a lot of time making cages for them by digging holes in the walls, making steel frames, fixing timber and glass and installing a lighting system.

 

Thanks to his hard work, each animal has its own habitat with soil, plants and rocks as seen in the wilderness.

 

“The cafe is very interesting,” says Nguyen Quang Thi, one of the regular visitors.

 

“I often bring my children here on weekends to see these animals in their real life rather than in the picture.”

 

Nguyen Binh Minh (born in 1988) who is holding a large, yellow male salamander in her hands, says “I really love him. But the first time when I came here, I didn’t dare to touch him”.

 

Some friends like to tease Minh about the male salamander which they regard as her ‘boyfriend’.

 

Nguyen Phuong Duy, a Tarantula spider lover says, “It is a dangerous hybrid species but its poison has been extracted. Anyway if you hurt it, the spider may react and bite.”

 

Nghia explains that not all animals are dangerous such as ‘milky’ snakes or “thorny tail’ lizards from the desert in North Africa.

 

One virtue of the Pet Club is that visitors are free to come and see the living creatures which they love as gifts from Mother Nature, Nghia says with a welcome touch of pride.

 

 (VOV)