A heavy bout of rain on Monday in Vietnam left many homes and buildings flooded with ankle-high water.

In Ho Chi Minh City, staff at the Trung Vuong Hospital had to wade through flooded corridors and catch eels.

In this video posted by the local Thanh Niên News, nurses are seen catching one of the eels, and shrieking as they manage to put one of them in a plastic bag.

The weather bureau recorded 204mm of rain in two hours on Monday night -- more than twice the average for heavy rainfall in Vietnam's largest city, which hovers between 50-100mm.

The Asian swamp eel is indigenous to waters in East and Southeast Asia, and farmers in the countryside occasionally find they have to catch eels as well, when water levels rise.

In the cities, eels also occasionally come into homes when flood waters enter.

Ho Chi Minh City continues to struggle with periodic flooding due to inadequate city drainage. It plans to build a new $945 million pipeline in October to improve flood control and sewage management.

Dams will also be built along the Saigon River bank to help control flooding, the government said.