Thursday: Glass Egg and Karaoke

So Thursday morning, the first thing we did was head over to UEF for some classes. Our first lecture was about the planning for development of the Mekong Delta. It was interesting, his main points being that making the area suitable for one group usually makes it unsuitable for another. For example, shrimp farmers need salt water, but rice farmers need fresh water, so if a shrimp farmer moves in next to a rice farmer, there'll be salt in the rice farmer's water too. No easy decisions to be made. After that  lecture we had more language class.

For lunch, we went to our usual spot, and here are some pictures I took of Jen without her knowledge. She really likes it when I do that.

Here's a picture of the logo for the company my dad works for. I had never seen any of its presence except at its headquarters in the US, but it's all over HCMC.

So after lunch we went to Glass Egg Digital Media. It's a company that designs graphics for video games. They've designed cars for, they said, every racing video game except Gran Turismo. So their niche is cars, and they've done smaller work for different things. What was awesome was walking around and seeing the cars being created for PS4 games. I couldn't take pictures, but the graphics were completely unreal. This tour was interesting because the CEO, CFO, and COO took us around. It was interesting seeing outsource used for something other than factory work. Most of the employees were artists and then taught by Glass Egg to use all of the programs. It helped make the realization that anything can be outsourced, and skilled laborers reside everywhere.

Here are some pictures from, I believe, the 17th floor of the building where Glass Egg is located. HCMC is huge and flat. The pictures don't do it justice, but it  is the craziest thing to look at.

At the end of the tour, the CEO and CFO told us about a club they invested in and told us they could set up VIP for us, so our plan for Friday night was set.

After Glass Egg we went to check out Ben Thanh Market at the recommendation of the hotel bartenders that we befriended. It was a little crazy. All of the vendors are incredibly aggressive. They literally will grab you by the arm and make you look at their knock-off watches. It was cool though. Prices were good but like 5 minutes after we arrived it started to pour and even though it's indoors, vendors started packing up. So we were a little bummed, but then we realized we were hungry and that would work as a good distraction. We went to a restaurant across the street called Pho 2000. Pho is pretty much THE food in Vietnam. It's hard to describe. It's a pretty plain noodle soup type of thing, but it's delicious. I ordered regular beef pho and Ben ordered beef stew pho, but when mine came out, Ben claimed it and I ended up with the beef stew. It was AMAZING. The restaurant was totally geared to tourists but that dish tasted really good.

Earlier in the day, we had made plans to go to a karaoke place with the UEF students, but after eating we realized we were late to our 6:30 departure time. Once we got to the hotel, they were still there, so we just turned around and went to karaoke.

This is a picture of the karaoke room. There's nothing like it in America. Our group just goes in this little room and we get waited on and sing. It got real emotional in there. I really put my heart on the line for one of the Vietnamese girls when I sang Total Eclipse of the Heart. 

After karaoke, we just came back to the hotel. Our plan for Friday was class, a "cultural exchange," and then Lush, the night club the Glass Egg guys owned.