Shadowing Practice: Speak English Naturally With Me | Easy Comprehensible Input Vlog - Learn English Speaking with Video

Welcome back to a new video guys.

Today we are in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Today we have a clear and natural comprehensible input vlog.

In this video we will be walking around the city, visiting different places and describing everything using comprehensible input.

This video is part of my 3,000 most common English word series designed to help you understand up to 95% of spoken English.

If you want to get the PDF, it's in the description.

Describe extended periods of time.

Explore all the flowers there.

The shorter they are.

Noise pollution.

Renamed hottest double-decker bus.

Supported.

Let's get started.

Okay, guys, so we're in Vietnam, and let's describe everything around us with comprehensible input, with very clear, natural English.

What are these called right here?

What are these called?

These are stools.

The stools I am used to are about this tall, and usually you sit on them when you are at a counter.

It's very common to have stools in bars or in your kitchen around the counter.

However, these stools are very short.

You can see how much shorter they are compared to a regular-sized stool.

So in my experience in Asia, the stools are a lot smaller because people just sit very low to the ground.

They sit very low to the ground.

In the West, we do not sit that low to the ground at all, so it is, like, a little uncomfortable to sit like that for extended periods of time, but it's not too bad, if I'm being honest.

So if you look over here, this is, I guess, what a typical area in District 1 looks like in Vietnam.

Currently, we are in District 1, which is the most famous district for tourists in Vietnam.

You can see many vehicles here, which is surprising.

Usually you see a lot more scooters, but inside this area right here, there are just scooters.

But yeah, they just have scooters there.

Over here, we have a tree, and there are many trees along this road.

And here we have carport boxes that have been opened up and flattened and placed on this cart.

The person that owns this will probably sell it later.

But if you go over here, you can see the cafe apartments.

The cafe apartments, and we're about to go over there and check out the view and drink a coffee.

This is not our first day in Ho Chi Minh.

We've been here for a few days, but this is the first time we're filming.

And we're just going to explore all the tourist sites and just explore Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

This is our second time in Vietnam.

The last time I was here was with my younger brother.

That was three years ago.

This time I'm here with my older brother three years later.

But I am excited to be in Vietnam.

Vietnamese food is some of my favorite food and we have been indulging heavily in that food haven't we?

Yeah we have we had some good Vietnamese hamburgers last night.

Look up there dude to me that looks like uh the avengers tower if you put like an a on it like the avengers logo dude that would literally look like the avengers tower.

Anyways today we'll be talking at a normal natural english pace but we'll be talking clearly so try your best to follow along and shadow and if there are moments you don't understand something just rewind a few seconds you can also turn on captions in the corner by clicking the cc button and you can follow along there as well if you want captions but anyways we are walking on the sidewalk here in ho chi minh city it's not too hot today but it still is hot compared to canada so i just opened up my weather app and It's currently 30 degrees Celsius in Ho Chi Minh City, but it feels like 34 degrees.

But it's only 11 a.m.

It's not the hottest time of day yet.

Around noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., that is when it will be the hottest.

And today there is a high of 35 degrees, so it will be very hot today.

What about rain?

Rain, no rain, but it is very sunny.

I wish I brought my umbrella.

I low-key need it.

Look at the sidewalk here.

It's very stained, eh?

Yeah.

It's very, very stained.

It's like stained like black almost.

I wonder what that is.

Do you have any guesses?

Honestly, I don't know.

Like, it's not sticky.

I think it's from food.

Like, cooking oil, maybe?

Oil.

Yeah, okay, oil.

It's kind of like darker.

And that's what oil looks when it stains something.

Anyways, you guys tell me why this wall is here.

If you want to learn faster and go deeper than the video, then get the workbook on my website, volcaenglish.com.

The workbook explains everything in greater detail and comes with exercises to help you learn new vocabulary, grammar, tenses, sentence patterns, comprehension, and real English you can actually use.

I also have workbooks for past videos, so you can keep practicing and improving every lesson.

Click the link in my description to get the workbooks.

This wall is to hide the construction on the other side.

So currently they are probably building something on the other side of this, and they put this wall here to hide it.

I guess this is what they're building.

A mall with a pool, like a rooftop pool.

That's what they're building here.

But I do really like the vibe in Vietnam.

I love it.

It's nice, like look, just look.

I just like looking out at stuff.

Although I will say one thing, there is a lot of noise pollution.

Noise pollution is a term that refers to honking.

Like you hear all that honking, The sounds of vehicles, the sound of people working, noise pollution.

There is a lot of noise pollution that you have to get used to.

And in Vietnam, people park their scooters everywhere.

All along the sidewalk, you'll see scooters parked.

Like, look at this.

Everywhere you look, there are scooters parked.

Isn't there a stat that there are more scooters than people in Vietnam?

Yeah, it's like two to one or something.

We should low-key eat something, eh?

You hungry?

I thought you said you weren't hungry today.

Oh, I'm hungry every day.

I'm not hungry for dinner, though.

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I don't know.

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We'll find anything good along the street.

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Yeah, if we see something good, we'll definitely stop by.

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What about the Sony Fujifilm Nikon Canon store?

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Oh, I think this whole street is cameras.

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What do you think they sell there?

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I think they sell Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, and Sony.

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Are you sure?

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What makes you say that?

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I don't know.

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I just got a hunch.

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A hunch.

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He has a hunch that they sell cameras.

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I don't know.

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I would bet they don't.

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If I bet you $100 they don't, would you take that bet?

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I would take that bet.

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You would?

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I would.

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Oh, confident.

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Okay, so we are now at 7-Eleven and we just came here to get something to drink since it's so hot out.

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And to also cool down because these stores are always cool because they have the AC running.

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But I think I'll get a Pocari sweat.

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I think electrolytes are good.

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It's just kind of small though.

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Get those two plus one.

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You think these are good?

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Those are electrolytes too.

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Does it revive zero calorie?

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Okay, I'll get two of these then and then we'll get a third one.

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Hopefully these taste good.

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As you guys know, I love trees.

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And this is a really cool tree.

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This is low-key a perfect tree for an urban area, is it not?

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Because it gives you shade.

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I'm pretty sure this is called the shade tree.

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Oh, really?

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Because this is literally like an umbrella, a natural umbrella.

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And here you can see the tree is supported by this metal so that it grows straight directly upwards.

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So this is used as support.

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And it's actually quite nice.

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It has a bed around the tree trunk.

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Quite nice.

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They should put flowers in here, though.

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I don't know if they planted these or these are just natural, but they should put flowers.

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Maybe during spring there are flowers.

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Maybe.

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Anyways, let's keep going.

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Okay guys, for this next part, I'm going to put a full paragraph of text on screen, and I want you guys to shadow me as I read this.

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I really, really want you to focus on pronunciation in this part.

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That is the number one focus.

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Pronunciation and accent.

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This is a modern street in the city.

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There are many tall buildings here and the area looks clean, bright and busy.

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In the middle there is a narrow building with many cafes, restaurants and signs on it.

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Around it there are large glass buildings that look very modern.

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The sky is clear and blue and the weather looks hot and sunny.

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On the road I can see a few cars and motorbikes.

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There are also some trees which make the street look more relaxing.

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This place feels lively, urban, and interesting.

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I like this scene because it shows a mix of modern city life and local character.

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Okay, what did you guys think of that pronunciation and accent training?

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Was that helpful?

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You want to see more of that in my videos?

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Or was it not helpful?

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Let me know in the comments.

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Now let's go visit the cafe apartments.

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We'll try to go up as high as we can and get a nice view because I want to sit on the balcony so we could just look out at Ho Chi Minh City or some people call it Saigon.

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Let's go.

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Okay guys we have made it to one of the main squares here in Ho Chi Minh.

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I think this is the most famous place to come in Saigon.

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It's a square like a big rectangle walkway but you can see it's just huge from all the way down there all the way up there and at the end is the palace right Independence Palace.

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It kind of reminds me of that walkway in Busan that goes all the way through the ocean.

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Hyundai, Hyundai, something beach, something like that.

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Yeah, the big beach in Busan.

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In Busan, yeah.

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There's a big, big like, I mean, the cars can still drive just like this, but it's like a big walkway like this heading to the beach in Busan.

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It is actually similar.

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It does give similar vibes.

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But to my left, you can see the cafe apartments.

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Get my 3000 most common English words PDF and learn the words that will help you understand up to 95% of everyday English.

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It includes real definitions, real example sentences for every meaning, and everything is organized by CEFR level and topic.

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Click the link in the description to get it.

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How would you describe those cafe apartments?

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The building feels a lot bigger in person than it does in pictures.

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Yeah, in pictures it definitely looks smaller, doesn't it?

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Yeah, it feels a lot more grand and we could probably easily calculate how many different stores there are in there, right?

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Just by counting.

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But good thing we won't do that.

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But I really do love like all the signs and especially at night, I'm pretty sure it's all like lit up.

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So it looks super good, honestly.

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I recognize that percentage sign.

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It's for- That's Arabica.

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Yeah, that's Arabica.

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Yeah, that's a really popular coffee chain.

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Yeah, because- I thought Arabica was like a type of coffee.

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No, Arabica is also a chain because there are some in Kuala Lumpur, Arabica.

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Arabica percentage, that's what it's called.

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Okay guys, now how would you describe this area we're standing on?

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How would you describe this?

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Give me three words in the comments to describe this area.

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So if I were to describe this area, the place we're standing on, I would say it's not very busy and not crowded.

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Usually it's quite crowded.

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We came here at night yesterday and the day before, and this place was really crowded.

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There were so many people.

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But now it's kind of quiet.

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I think it's because it's almost noon.

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People are at work.

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People are at home.

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And it is the hottest time of day, isn't it?

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Yeah, it's way too hot to be enjoying this outdoor weather.

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The sun is almost at its peak, so it's just cooking out here, dude.

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But it does get nice at night.

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It's nice to go out.

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The weather is more comfortable at night.

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No, the weather is a lot more bearable at night.

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So that's one word, not crowded and not busy.

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We'll put that in the same department.

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Two more.

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The second word I would use to describe this is just big.

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And the third, flat.

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Very simple words, but it's big, it's flat, and it's not crowded.

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But one thing I do really like about this is I like the row of trees on each side of this square, this rectangle thing.

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It's super, super nice, isn't it?

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Yeah, it's really pleasing to the eyes.

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Let's walk down here, I think, towards Independence Palace.

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And then let's walk back and finish off the video at the cafe apartment.

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So you guys, if you want to see the view from up there and also see us drink our first egg coffee, I haven't had an egg coffee yet.

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Me either.

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We'll do that at the end of the video, so stick around.

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But I'm pretty sure that's the Independence Palace.

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I will just double check myself first.

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I don't want to give you guys false information.

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Oh, but there is a statue of Ho Chi Minh down there.

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I don't know if you can see it on camera, but Ho Chi Minh is down there.

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So that is who this city is named after.

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Okay, so we have a quick fact I want to read to everyone.

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If you're Vietnamese, you'll obviously know this, but I'll read it for everyone else that doesn't know.

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So Ho Chi Minh City was renamed from Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City.

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That's why some people still call it Saigon.

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even right there that says Royal Hotel Saigon.

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It was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 to honor the late communist revolutionary leader and first president of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh.

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So it's named after this person in front of us.

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You can see the statue of him.

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So yeah, that's why it's named this.

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Have you been to his mausoleum in Hanoi?

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No, I haven't.

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Have you been?

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Yeah, it's like a big...

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Is it nice?

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Yeah, it's a big garden area and a park area, park area and there's a couple museums there and then there's a big building made out of stone that's his mausoleum.

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I've never been there but we are going to be going to Hanoi so I think we'll go visit that but something else I really want to do is go on this double-decker bus.

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I really want to go on that double-decker bus at night though because at night the whole city lights up and then it's just beautiful to go around and it's not too hot so you can sit on top and not burn to a crisp.

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Cause I don't know if you guys can tell, but my face has gotten more tan.

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I don't know if you can tell on camera though, but I have gotten more tan and my arms too.

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So I need to wear long clothes so I don't burn.

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Yeah.

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And then you could get skin cancer and stuff.

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Yeah, I've already burned a lot when I was younger.

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Now that I'm older, I want to be, you know, more conscious of my health and body since I'm not young anymore.

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Okay, so to get to the Ho Chi Minh statue and that palace, we can't go through this roundabout since roundabouts are only for vehicles.

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We're going to have to cross this crosswalk and then that one and then that one and then that one.

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so one two three four crosswalks until we can reach the statue for you guys it'll be a second but for us it'll be a couple minutes okay so we have got to the square around the square you can see all these luxury stores over there you have chanel rolex burberry fendi cartier bulgari whatever that says but anyways this is the statue of ho chi min he died in 1969 it's an interesting date.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So this is a statue and it appears to be a bronze statue.

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So this is a statue.

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How else would you describe it?

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I started for you guys.

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You learned how to describe things in my past videos.

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So how would you describe this statue?

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What is the color of the statue?

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The statue is bronze.

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The statue is also very tall and the area around the statue is very beautiful.

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And at the foot of the statue.

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You can see people leave flowers there.

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Those are some beautiful bouquets.

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We'll leave the statue alone now and we'll go to the cafe apartment.

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Let's go.

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We're in the cafe apartment now and we need to walk up like a couple flights of stairs until we find a cafe we like.

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Look at this door.

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This door is filled with stickers.

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We're at the cafe apartment.

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We chose to come to Saigon.

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It was literally the first one we walked into.

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So I wanted an egg coffee but I'm pretty sure this is warm, right?

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If you're serious about becoming fluent in English, I've built a full speaking and pronunciation course that shows you exactly what to do step by step.

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And this is not just a course full of random videos.

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You'll get an exclusive ChatGPT prompt that allows you to master the pronunciation of any word, plus a clear practice structure so you always know exactly how to study, what to focus on, and how to make real progress.

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Inside we work on pronunciation, accent, rhythm, and natural speaking, so you can stop hesitating, sound more natural, and speak English with real confidence.

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join today in the description yeah it's probably warm so i think i'm gonna go with a mixed raspberry smoothie low-key probably overpriced but you're paying for the view and what did you want uh salt coffee which one this one yeah i'm gonna go order that then we'll look at this view this is pretty nice and there's honestly a nice breeze and they have this shade from the tree okay guys so now we are at the top of the balcony you can see i finished my entire drink but stand up look at this view dude beautiful Vietnamese flag bro look at that view these are the stools I was talking about the tall normal ones like this those ones are very small those stools but the ones we saw earlier were even smaller I don't know how they do it but I like this size this size is quite nice but yeah have you guys been to the cafe apartments and if you haven't would you come let me know in the comments tell me guys what was your favorite part of this video and do you want to see more videos in Vietnam.

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Let me know in the comments and I'll see you guys in the next video.

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Oh, and if you want to get the 3,000 most common English words PDF, it's in the description.

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In this lesson, I want you to shadow.

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You can see how much shorter they are compared to a regular size stool.

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To sit like that for extended periods of time, we have carport boxes that have been opened up and flattened and placed.

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And we're just going to explore all the tourist sites and just explore in Ho Chi Minh City but it feels like 34 degrees.

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P.M.

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2 p.m.

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That is when it will be the hottest.

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And today there is a high of 35.

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I will say one thing, there is a lot of noise pollution.

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Noise pollution is...

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I don't know, I just got a hunch.

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A hunch.

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He has a hunch that they self...

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And here you can see the tree is supported by this metal.

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How would you describe those cafe apartments?

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There were so many people.

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But now it's kind of quiet.

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It was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City in 1976.

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What I really want to do is go on this double-decker bus.

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The statue is bronze.

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You can see people leave flowers there.

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Those are some beautiful bouquets.

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You will become fluent in English.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Speak English Naturally With Me | Easy Comprehensible Input Vlog - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?