[Lu Stout:] Welcome back. Now, Vietnam's app scene is just developing, but young entrepreneurs there, they're hoping to hit it big. One couple created a platform designed to helping travelers connect with local tour guides. George Cramer is here in Vietnam for the very first time.
[George Cramer:] We're bound and determeind. We don't have much money, we are students, and we stay at cheap hostels, we like to go out, meet new people, get internationals.
[Lu Stout:] So he signed up with trip meet, a platform connecting travelers with locals.
[Unidentified Male:] We like Uber for our local experience.
[Lu Stout:] These locals are essentially freelance tour guides who create their own tour experiences to give to travelers.
[Unidentified Male:] If people go to Paris, they go to Eiffel tower, they go to Hanoi, they go to the lake everybody goes to the same place, but what if we open up everybody in the city?
[Lu Stout:] It began as a university student club. Members would help show tourists around Ho Chi Minh city for free in exchange to get a chance to practice their English. Nearly a decade later in 2013, husband and wife team Ha Lam and Hai Ho turned the project into a business.
[Ha Lam, Entrepreneur:] We want to build the happiest community where all the travelers and local experts can very easily become friends and share their memory, their happiness on the way they travel.
[Lu Stout:] The platform is growing. It's now available across dozens of countries, but it has not been an easy journey. Ha Lam and Hai Ho had to sell their house in order to fund its launch, and even with that, they consider themselves the lucky ones.
[Hai Ho, Entrepreneur:] Obviously, not everybody has a house to sell. The key for Vietnam is to have more [inaudible] investor. Because you got an idea like us, you can do a team, but you don't have enough money to grow it.
[Lu Stout:] The app business here in Vietnam is comprised of a small but growing community of tech start-ups looking to make it big.
[Bobby Eiu, Entrepreneur:] I tell new founders, if there's any opportunity, go out, leave the country for a few months, or even a year, just to experience and to really see the needs of the region rather than looking just into Vietnam.
[Lu Stout:] Bobby EIU rents a start-up incubator in Vietnam. He says creators need to look beyond its borders in order to face regional and global competition.
[Eiu:] As an initial market, if you look at us here, well, you say 600 million. Look at ASEAN as a region, we are at least able to compete with Eastern Asia as a bloc. I think it's able to create the kind of viability in terms of marketplace
[Lu Stout:] For trip meet, it is a marketplace filled with new local experiences for tourists from ASEAN and all corners of the world. Now the South Korean author, Han Kang, has won the prestigious Man Booker international prize. Now this prize recognizes non-English books translated and published in the U.K., and her novel, "The Vegetarian", is about a woman who rejects society's norms and eventually becomes a tree. Now, the book was translated into English by a 28-year-old Briton who decided to learn Korean because she says there weren't a lot of Korean translators out there. And finally, the Berlin wall the mall there is usually shoppers' paradise in Germany, but it became much more than that on Monday. About 1,000 musicians gathered to play in a symphonic flash mob including many amateurs. Scores were available for download ahead of the event and the musicians played for about 1,500 spectators, what an orchestra spokesman called an overwhelming success. Now that is NEWS STREAM. I'm Kristie Lu Stout, but don't go anywhere. WORLD SPORT with Alex Thomas is next.