Motorbikes!!!!

Sorry to my loyal readers, I've been falling behind. This begins where the last post ended. So when we went to dinner with the UEF students, half of us got to ride on motorbikes, but there weren't enough UEF kids. The others took a taxi. It was CRAZY. Traffic here is insane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4phFYiMGCIY That video shows a pretty familiar sight. It's hard to get a good photo from the ground. 

These are some photos from the motorbike. These things are insane. They're surprisingly stable though. I had no trouble riding without holding onto anything. Never felt like I was in imminent danger but it got a little white knuckle weaving diagonally through oncoming traffic in order to turn. I have a love/hate relationship with the bikes because they're so fun.

Where we went to dinner was a Vietnamese Barbeque. They'd bring out plates of raw meat and we'd cook them ourselves on these grills. This picture shows goat meat. Everything was delicious and it was a lot of fun. We were learning some Vietnamese cheers which were basically just the commencement of imbibing. We loved the place though and it was a great choice by our UEF friends. 

This is the shrimp when they were alive.

And this is the shrimp when they were dead.

Feeding the kitties in this restaurant proved to be a mistake.

After dinner we went to the mall and got ice cream. This is the shape of the spoons at that place. I was furious to say the least. After ice cream we went to bed to get ready for a big day Wednesday.

This morning, we had two company visits right away after an 8:15 wake up. I tried to get some good photos of the traffic from the bus. Notice some of the motorbikes going in opposite directions. The bus ride was a blast though. Ben suggested playing some bus games which was a great decision. We played mafia and dirty dirty (a musical version of the drinking game thumper). Both were too fun. I got real vocal in mafia and me and Amy were able to hold it down and win as the mafia, which if anyone has played the game is really hard. Dirty dirty was obviously a blast and I got to take the lead on the singing so I was really in my zone.

The first company visit Wednesday was to VSIP (Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park), which was really interesting to learn about. They basically bought land, and made some pre-fab factories and left some plots for custom factories. A logical transition was into a company visit at II-VI Corporation located inside the industrial park. The tour guide was an American and actually gave us his card to go on a pub crawl later in the week. That should be interesting, not to mention a phenomenal networking experience. II-VI was interesting mainly because we got to witness outsource labor firsthand. I'm sure we'd only see a good example, but this really did not live up to the reputation of outsource labor. The factory was really nice, and although I wouldn't like factory work, I'd be comfortable working there. It was so win-win; the American companies can find cheap labor, but the wages are high to the Vietnamese people. Keeping a nice environment and giving decent wages is purely beneficial to Vietnam. Americans complain of outsource labor, but no one is willing to accept a wage lower than that of an astronaut, so outsource labor is the present and future. 

These pictures are from the II-VI factory. The people in the first photo were making some sort of precision pieces for optical equipment. The next photo I just thought they were wearing cool suits, but I can't remember what they were working on. 

After II-VI, we went to a Chinese restaurant. This picture was dessert. All of the desserts have been fruit which is actually something I might bring home with me. Always tops off my meal well. The fruit here is watermelon, papaya, and dragon fruit. Dragon fruit is amazing. The Chinese restaurant was really good overall. Two things were a little scary for us though. There was octopus (which was pretty good) and shrimp that still had their faces. It was hard to decipher between this meal and typical Vietnamese food. All I know is that this Chinese was nothing like the Chinese at home.

After lunch, we went to Eastern International University. The students there were nice (like everyone we've met). Their English was phenomenal, all of them were very fluent, so it was practically like speaking to other Americans. Something about this was interesting though. The girl the second from the right in this picture had an Australian accent. I had never considered developing the accent of the teacher, but that's what happened. In this picture, the EIU students are holding a picture that shows our explanation of Easter. We played a game where we got into groups and some groups had Vietnamese festivals the Americans had to draw, where we had Vietnamese people draw an American "festival." Our group had Easter and it was funny realizing just how ridiculous our tradition of Easter was. Their festivals all had traditional meanings, whereas Easter was pretty much turned into a sales campaign by candy companies.

Here's a nice picture of me and Greggy at EIU.

Hieu and Jake. She was little, and he was the tallest person most of them had ever seen.

Me and Tin had a good photo shoot.

This was our check at dinner. We weighed our options and decided running would be the best idea (kidding). The difference in the value of Dong and USD is really crazy. This dinner was by far the best thing we had eaten at that point. I had beef with chilis and lemongrass. I could eat that meal every day. A fun factoid we learned was that Bill Clinton ate at that restaurant.

After dinner, we went to a club called Apocalypse. Everybody thought it was awesome, but I thought the clubs in Cancun were a lot better. Dancing was a good time though and we were hanging out as a group. Everybody on the trip has been getting along really well.

I hope to get caught up on blogging quickly, but we've been having a lot of fun so it's hard to find time.