Day 7

Today was another exhausting day. First, we had a Vietnamese cooking class this morning. There is a restaurant here in HCMC that gives cooking classes, where they teach you the whole process: bartering at the market, preparing all the ingredients, and actually making the food. Our group was split into three smaller groups, and we were each given certain ingredients and amounts that we had to go to the market and find. The market was a very interesting place...lots of different smells going on there, many odd sights, too (see the pig's feet below). The most interesting thing, though, was the perspective we got on how much things cost. We bought seven ingredients total: shallot, noodles, two types of rice paper, carrots, potatoes, and bananas. Enough of each of these things for 13 people cost 36,000 dong total...that's just about $2. Once we got all the ingredients, we went to the restaurant and started preparing all our ingredients. For example, cleaning the bean sprouts and morning glory stems and getting all the feet and shells off the shrimp. We made three dishes: fried spring rolls, fresh spring rolls, and a three course dinner of pineapple fried rice, fish, and soup. The fried spring rolls were my favorite and will be easy to replicate at home :) I never thought shrimp and banana could taste so good together.
After the lunch we made, we spent a few hours at Dam Sen Waterpark with some children from an orphanage. It was so much fun! Although they spoke no English and we hardly speak any Vietnamese, we still managed to get along really well. They were very, very friendly. Not 30 seconds into meeting them was I holding hands with two Vietnamese girls. And for the next two hours that didn't change very much. We rode lots of rides and did a lot of laughing and playing around. It was really rewarding seeing them get to have such a good time with us and with each other. They also loved taking pictures with us. I didn't take my camera with, but the adults that were with the group of children did and will be sending us some of them soon, hopefully.
These are just some random pictures I took today and thought were interesting. Enjoy!

The best Buddha I have seen in Vietnam so far.

Our delicious fried spring rolls.

The pig's feet at the market. "Is it dead?"

Day 6: Mekong Delta

Today was definitely my favorite of the trip so far. We got up extra early to travel three hours into the Mekong Delta, which is south of Ho Chi Minh City. On our way there, we made a stop at a soldier's cemetary, where casualties of what the Vietnamese call the American War have been buried. There were around 4000 or 5000 Vietnamese soldiers buried there, in these beautiful white tombs around a monument that read "the fatherland never forgets." The next stop was at a temple, which I thought was the most beautiful thing I have seen so far on this trip. It's a temple that has been 'made for everyone', according to our tour guide, as many temples in Vietnam are said to be. Inside, there is an altar with four people on it: buddha, a taoist, Jesus, and a confucianist. I wish I could share all of the inside pictures, but there are so many!







Above is a picture of the floating market in the Mekong Delta, where people buy and sell food, supplies, and other necessities as they see fit. This is just one of the things we got to experience at the Delta. After getting on our boat, we first went to a small village and to a house to have fruit and tour their gardens, which was really cool. We then got ferried down to a larger village and to a house where they were making coconut candy (which was delicious, so I bought some for home). While we were at this house, however, it started downpouring. The rain here continues to fascinate me. We waited out the storm for a while and then took a half hour long boat ride through the floating market to another house for lunch, which was amazing. I didn't eat much yesterday, but I definitely made up for it at lunch today. They actually put cooked fish (the whole fish...including the fins, which someone at my table ate) on our tables and we had to make our own spring rolls. They also had these crunchy vegetable rolls and noodle soup that was delicious, along with the usual banana and pineapple for dessert.
My overall impression of the Delta and it's people is that it is much more laid back than in the city, and I very much enjoyed it for this reason. The people did not heckle us to buy things and were always waving and smiling at us. Also, it was really nice to get away from all the motorbikes and honking horns for a while.

Day 5

We started off today with our Vietnamese language class and a business class, in which we learned about monetary policy in Vietnam. After lunch at the school, we had some time to wander around District 12, where the school is located. Walking around there was much different from walking around here. The Vietnamese have the same kinds of shops set up as they do here in District 1, but they were all very much nicer about selling things. In the Ben Thanh Market, for example, the people come up to you and try very hard to get you to buy their things, but in District 12, they were just happy to say hello to us. Even people passing by on scooters waved and said hello, which I thought was really neat. I guess that in that section of Ho Chi Minh City they don't normally see a lot of tourists. The side streets were also much less busy there.
After our exploring, we went on a company visit to Ascenx Technologies, which is a new engineering firm. Although they focused a lot on the engineering terms and things, I still feel like I got a lot out of this site visit. There were maybe 25 people in the office, and every single one of them were really nice to us. After we learned about the company, we all just kind of hung around the office talking to the Vietnamese employees. The founder of the company, Thun, is one of the thousands of Vietnamese who fled Vietnam on a boat after the fall of Saigon. His story was incredible, I am very glad I got to hear an account such as his.
We just got back from a homestay dinner. Basically, we went to this Vietnamese home where they made a business out of cooking traditional Vietnamese meals for foreigners and welcome you in for a few hours. There were three generations living in this beautiful home on the Saigon River, and they fed us this wonderful food. We ate outside, and it was drizzling a little, which was really refreshing. The mango we had for dessert was delicious.
Tomorrow, we are leaving at 7am for a day trip to the Mekong Delta. It will take us three hours to get there, and then we will be there in the afternoon for a boat ride and for lunch. I am very excited to see the floating villages and markets. Hopefully I will get some good pictures.

Day 4

We started off today by going to Le Hong Phong, a high school for gifted students. It is a school that these students have to be accepted into, and once they are accepted, they get to choose a major like English, French, chemistry, biology, IT, etc. on which 10th, 11th and 12th grades are based. The students we got the opportunity to interact with were all English majors, and once again I was VERY impressed by how well they spoke our language. They were very interested in our lives in America. I asked the student I spoke with what she plans on doing after high school, and she seemed very excited and motivated to either come to America or England to go to a university, which I thought was really awesome. All of the students were very fun, they liked taking pictures with us, too, which I really enjoyed.For lunch, Krysta and I went to a place called Pho 24 (http://www.pho24.com.vn/index.php), which is a Vietnamese chain that serves a traditional soup. It was very good. We also got to see our first Vietnamese rain around lunchtime. It started off as a drizzle and then all of a sudden it was pouring. I can't imagine Ho Chi Minh City actually during the monsoon season. After 5 minutes of a heavy downpour, the streets were flooded. My umbrella wasn't helping much, we still ended up getting soaked. But it was a really awesome experience. There's no good way to describe the rains. I kind of like how Forrest Gump puts it, "Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath."

After lunch, we heard a presentation by a lawyer who works for Duane Morris. He didn't talk much about the company itself, but rather how the economic crisis that is going on around the world will effect Vietnam later, but only in a secondary sense. He had a lot to say about the corruption in Vietnam, as well, and hearing about it made me realize just how corrupt the government is. He said that sometimes when he rides his motorbike, a general will stop him and ask for $10...and although the general can't technically do that, he has to give him the $10 or his bike will be taken away. It's actually kind of scary that these sorts of things go on.

We just got back from a trip to the Ben Thanh Market, where we just kind of looked around and got some dinner. The Ben Thanh Market was an interesting experience. You can get t-shirts for $3 there, which I will probably end up doing eventually. They also have a lot of really cool traditional trinkets that will fit perfectly in my suitcase.

This is a picture of all the motorbikes that were parked at the high school we went to this morning. And this was one side of the parking lot, to give you an idea. The students each have their own, which I think is really neat. They don't need a license to drive one, but have to be at least 16. I was a passenger on a motorbike ride twice today, and was impressed by how much skill it takes to ride one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr5Gssaxl6g&NR=1

Day 3

Today was a lot like yesterday. We had a Vietnamese culture and history class instead of a business class. The professor was pretty awesome, he got very excited to tell us about the history and culture, which made it really enjoyable for all of us, I think. In our language class, we learned how to say "Hi, how are you?" "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" and "Goodbye, hope to see you soon." We also started learning "Where are you from?" and "I'm an American". Our language professor is amazing. I am so glad we have her; I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be as much fun if it were with someone else.

Our site visit today was to Phu My Hung, which is an urban development company. It was located in the area that it is building up, Saigon South. Saigon South was about an hour from our hotel in south Ho Chi Minh City, and it is basically a new city they are building with businesses, and residential housing. Listening to the International Marketing Director was very interesting. I never really thought about how cities are started, and I realized today that a lot of thought and planning goes into EVERYTHING having to do with this. They had a huge model (see below) of Saigon South, and so far it looks to me like all is going as planned. There is a huge convention center, many many fancy high rises, car dealerships, recreational areas, etc. The point of building this city is, I think, to redistribute some of the population within Ho Chi Minh City, and to bring in foreign companies. I think I learned a lot from this site visit. I am really glad that we are getting an opportunity to visit companies like these, and it helps me look forward to our other site visits. Tomorrow we don't have classes in the morning, but are instead going to a high school for children that have a lot of potential/special talents. In the afternoon, we will be visiting Duane Morris LLC.

(Top picture is the model of the city, bottom picture is part of the progress on the city so far)

Day 2

Today was pretty calm. We discovered the egg lady at the breakfast buffet. She's the Vietnamese equivalent of the omelette guy at Market Central. I think I'll be getting fried eggs for breakfast every morning from here on out. We had a business class at UEF, which was interesting. He lectured on the tax reform taking place in Vietnam. It was a little hard to pay attention because 1) I was exhausted and 2) There was kind of a little language barrier....but after that class, we had our daily language class which is just hilarious. The professor is so nice and patient. Plus, the language is kind of funny when you're learning all the different tones, so it's just a good time. We laughed a lot today, everything seemed funny, which I am blaming on our exhaustion.

After classes, we had a little mishap in an elevator (kind of got stuck for a few minutes...we were a few people over the weight limit, but we got saved so it's ok), and then did our first site visit at Glass Egg Digital Media. I was really impressed by this company. They are a software developer. Basically, they make the picture you see in video games. So for example, today everyone was working on the cars for some sort of racing game. It was all very complex and the artists must all be so skilled in order to do that job. I liked going there a lot because it was so different from what I expected. The CEO and CFO also had a lot of interesting comments to make about the economy and Vietnam as a whole, as well. (http://www.glassegg.com/)

Our first day!

Ok, so Ho Chi Minh City at night is MUCH different from Ho Chi Minh City during the day. I think this picture pretty much sums up the place. First of all, the traffic is insane. Most people drive motorbikes around because it's real easy to weave in and out of places, including around busses, through intersections, and on sidewalks to avoid traffic. If you take a close look at the picture, you'll notice that people are going every which way on those things. Another thing to notice is all the shops that line the streets. I'm not quite sure how many blocks comprise HCMC, but I'm fairly certain there are thousands of shops within the city. The last thing in this picture I find interesting are the power cords at the top. It's incredible how many there are, and we probably saw crews working on them in at least five different places in our travels today. At corners, especially, you can just see tons and tons of cords wrapped around each other.

We started today off by getting the breakfast buffet, where I had some noodle and beef concoction which although I wouldn't typically call it breakfast, it was still delicious. We then took a bus ride to The University of Economics and Finance, where there was a welcome reception for us. We each had to introduce ourselves and we talked a little bit about Pitt, and then they told us about UEF and we mingled with the students. Then, we had a Vietnamese language class. Ling, the student who I sat with, had incredibly good English skills. I was very impressed by her, even after she told me that English is much easier to learn than Vietnamese. Then it was lunchtime, where we were served all sorts of different Vietnamese meals, all of which were delicious.

After leaving UEF, we had a break and then had a quick tour of HCMC. We went to Reunification Hall, which was the presidential palace before the fall of Saigon. It was breathtaking. There was a movie theatre, a game room, a heli pad, and many conference rooms. We also went down to the bunker to see what it was like. At this point of the day it was very hot and humid outside, so it was hard to enjoy being in a building with no AC. This was also the point during the day when I really started to feel tired.

We then went to see Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office. At Notre Dame we were bombarded by street vendors who wanted to sell us post cards and flowers and fans. They would not leave us alone after we refused to buy from them. So much so I thought they were going to end up in our group picture. After the Cathedral, we got a pretty awesome chance to tour and speak with people at the US Consulate. Although I was really tired, I was interested to hear all about working for the government in the foreign service and all the opportunities they get through that.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called Song Ha. We were served a four or five course meal that was...interesting. Vietnamese food doesn't really look all that tasty, so when you bite in you get a real shock of flavor. I tried everything they put on the table, including something that looked a little like squid or calamari. I'm quickly learning that I will need to get much better at using chopsticks. I had pineapple juice to drink, and I am almost certain it was freshly squeezed. It was kind of pulpy like orange juice, and very delicious.

It's only 9:10 here, but I am exhausted and will probably go to sleep soon so I can fully recover from the jet lag. Tomorrow we will have our daily Vietnamese language class, a culture class, and then a site visit to Glass Egg Digital Media in the afternoon.

"Baby, you rocked me!"