Team Coco

Friday was a pretty standard morning, we headed over to UEF for Vietnamese History and then Language class.

Here's a picture of Tin and Greg in the polos that UEF gave us for the cultural exchange. The cultural exchange was basically a series of games and competitions for us to mingle with UEF students. We split into 4 teams and naturally, my team was named Team Coco. I'd like to comment on the nickname Coco making it over to Vietnam. It's really taken hold and more people here call me Coco than at home. Coco was a name that my twin brother (shouts out to Chris) referred to me before he could pronounce my name. The progression followed that during the school year, one of my friends from home, the lovely Natalie, came to visit and called me Coco in front of my friends at school. A couple jumped on that, including Greg. Greg dropped it here and now it is my name. Onto Team Coco's domination.

The first challenge was a dance competition, so the logical decision was to form a line with the bulk of the team, have them open up and have me carried in on the shoulders of two people. It was highly graceful and I took to solo dancing with my team supporting me. Eventually tagged out, but we were the best. Our trip adviser was the judge of the event, and somehow he didn't like our organization so he gave us second. That's manageable. After that there was an event where they had to tie balloons to someone's head. After my performance I had no choice but to be the one with balloons tied to me. That went well, then there was an event where we had to pop all of the balloons and Team Coco won both. The next game was hard. There was a list of items in a category that one person on the team had to describe to a UEF student. Again I was put up. It was insanely hard. We got countries and the only one we got was Canada. It's weird how different of things we learn about in the US. One of the countries was Egypt and I was saying pyramids and mummies and he had no idea. I was shocked. 

The game after that was a popular one in Vietnam. It looked like a big Twister mat, with two dice. One was a color and the other was a picture. There were the different pictures with different colored rings around them and there was only one of each combination on the board. The way the game worked, once the dice were rolled, the first person to place a little rubber circle on the spot won a point. Also, we were tied to a partner by the wrist and ankle (shouts out to Kong). The game got pretty aggressive but I think Team Coco got second. After a hard fought battle, we took first overall and went home proud. I wish I had photos but we were pretty involved the whole time.

For dinner, we decided on Black Cat, which is a world-renown burger joint. Ironic, but it lived up to the hype. It was definitely the best burger I've ever had. Not my hand in the photo by the way. Being an average male college student, I went for the burger with bacon and BBQ sauce. One of the best decisions of my life. It'd be awesome to return some day.

It's hard to see because of the club lighting but Lush was really cool. We got VIP seating and the general manager was hanging out with us the whole time. The security treated us like movie stars and it was a really interesting experience. Our plans for the next day were to go to the Cu Chi tunnels. A history lesson was very welcome with me.

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.

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.

The Beginning and Being Tired

So my last post left off as we were about to go to UEF for the welcome ceremonies. Those were amazing. All of the students were so excited to see us. Felt pretty exotic. They had prepared dances for us and then tried to teach some of us the dance. It was pretty atrocious overall but a reminder to me what a phenomenal dancer I am. After that we all sang a Michael Jackson song. Apparently Vietnamese people sing a lot as groups, and were pretty surprised to hear we didn't. The UEF student sitting next to me, Jiang (I am pretty sure that spelling is incorrect), was embarrassed to tell me he didn't remember the lyrics and was shocked when I said I had heard the song maybe twice. After that they presented us with gifts (some UEF polos), and we took pictures. I neglected to take any pictures myself and have none from the ceremony, but there should be good ones on other people's blogs.

After the opening presentation we went to language class and it was HARD. The teacher was totally animated and I can't even begin to pronounce her name, it just sounded like a high pitched squeak. The hardest thing about learning Vietnamese is that the intonation of what a person says changes the meaning of the word. There are six tones, and for example, if you say a word with a rising pitch it has a totally different, unrelated meaning to a word with a falling pitch. Also, the consonant noises are pretty different from English and the vowel noises are no more similar. The UEF student teaching me, Minh I believe, was fabulous and really helped me make my letters sound right.

Here's a picture of the parking lot on UEF's campus. Everyone in Vietnam drives these motorbikes because cars are really expensive. The traffic is absolute chaos and I'll get a good picture before I leave.

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Here's a picture of the place we went for lunch, and will be going to lunch most days. It's quite delicious. In this picture right in front are pork and shrimp. The shrimp served in Vietnam still has the heads on so eating that is a strange experience for most Americans. Pretty crunchy. Also, the drink they serve is some sort of tea with a really mild flavor. Everything is so much lighter in Vietnam though. It's usually just meat, rice and maybe some herbs. Also, there's usually fruit for dessert. So far, Vietnamese food has been good.

After lunch, we went to the US Consulate, where we aren't allowed to take pictures or even have our phones. It was crazy how tight the security was though, plenty of heavy doors. They talked about careers as foreign service officers which, although interesting, did not sound like a career path for me. A little crazy. After that we got a tour. The Consulate is where the Embassy was located in the Vietnam War, so it's the same place that was attacked during the Tet Offensive. We learned a lot about how the attack actually played out, being able to see the spots where cover was taken. We took a picture in front of one of the round planters that is in the famous photo of the aftermath of the attack. One thing that was pretty difficult was right across the street, there was a visible memorial commemorating the Viet Cong who died in the attack. As our tour guide pointed out the symbolism was pretty strong, with two memorials separated by a wall. 

After the Consulate, we came to the hotel and I took a little nap, then we went to dinner. It was at a restaurant called Wrap & Roll. We had some sort of rice paper and would roll up different ingredients into these little wraps. I was extremely tired so I neglected to take any pictures, but it was pretty good. Greg managed to pull off a nice social atrocity by falling asleep head down on the table. Besides that, it was a pretty average meal. 

After dinner, we came back and hung out for a little, then a bunch of people went to hang out with UEF students, but my door was closed when they left so we got left behind. So those of us who were left behind just went to the hotel bar, being that we're of age here, and it was actually really fun. We met an Australian guy who had been all over so talking to him was fun. He said he had gone to the US, but only to Las Vegas, which he said "wasn't really part of the states." I thought about it and I have to say I agree. Weird to think that you have to go to certain areas to really get a taste of the US. 

This morning we started out getting breakfast at the hotel, which was surprisingly good. There wasn't one thing we didn't enjoy.

Here's what I got, some noodles, bacon, pork, and a miniature banana. I've never seen anything quite like that. This is where we're getting breakfast every day and I'm quite alright with that. 

After breakfast we went over to UEF for a lecture on urban planning and then another language class. The urban planning lecture I really didn't understand, the language class is only getting harder. Again the UEF student with me was really helpful, but I have little understanding. All of the sounds are so different and there was some serious psychological phenomenons going on, as when I'd hear a sound, I would think I knew what sound it was only to be proven wrong. For example, I thought I noticed ch- words beginning in a "t" sound. I was watching mouths and I grew really confident that that was the sound those letters made. Then a th- word came up and made the "same" sound. So I asked the UEF student with me, and it turns out it ch- makes a sound nothing like a "t." After this, I became mentally exhausted, but I can say hello and a few other phrases!

Here's Greg looking good at UEF.

I was trying to get good traffic pictures, but it was tough. Between the two right-most bushes, there's a guy on the back of a motorbike carrying some sort of large appliance. There is so little regard to safety on the streets here.

Here's another picture of someone carrying a ridiculous amount of cargo. This is fairly routine and I hope to get better photos throughout the trip. We saw a guy carrying a pane of glass that was maybe 12 feet tall? He looked ridiculous but our main concern was the wind resistance and the workout he was getting. The roads will likely be one of the main topics of this blog.

This is the old presidential palace from before Ha Noi was the capital. 

This is the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh City. About two thirds of the way up, you can see the heli-pad. 

All of the road pictures were taken on our long cruise over to Phu My Hung. It's an urban planning company, but I'm still not sure exactly what they do. It seems like they build buildings and rent them out, but some of what the presenter was saying made it seem like that was not the case. Everyone else was really impressed with the business plan, but I was mostly just confused. Sucks to be stupid. What really stuck with me was the view.

The pictures don't do it justice, but the view was incredible. The room that the presenters spoke in had huge windows on every side. The weird thing about this view is that it's only from the 12th floor. Ho Chi Minh City is really really flat. I seriously haven't noticed a single incline the entire time I've been here. A far cry from Pittsburgh. 

A cool garden from the balcony of the presentation room.

This is the model of the vision of the area of Ho Chi Minh City that Phu My Hung is developing. It's actually really far along, but the model is too cool. It was definitely neat to look out the window and see the buildings that there are models of.

After we got a bus tour of the Phu My Hung area, we went and hung out by the pool. Now it's dinner time with our UEF friends, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the locals think is cool.

First Post!

It's about 7:30 in the morning (8:30 PM at home) and it's an understatement to say I'm happy to be finished traveling. Overall, the trip wasn't bad, it was just looooooooong. I counted 32 hours from waking up in Pittsburgh to the Victory Hotel. It was mostly uneventful, just watching movies and things, like that. Zero Dark Thirty - not terribly impressed. Forrest Gump on the other hand was obviously the highlight of the trip. The weirdest thing though, the way we were flying, it was bright until about an hour into our last flight, so it was over 24 hours of daylight. Mentally it felt like a very very very long day. The only event worth mentioning was my meal choice on the flight from Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City. I had been pretty heavily asleep for 2 hours before that, woke up with the flight attendant in front of me, and in my loopy state picked the Japanese meal option rather than the American one. It was actually pretty good - eel, rice, and noodles. The only issue was there were salads (maybe?) and other assorted food items that I had no idea how to approach, so I didn't totally fill up. I got a decent amount of culture shock in Japan and the last flight, with English not being the primary language for example. I'm still pretty sheltered, but after tonight I'm sure I'll be immersed. The only real taste of Vietnam we got last night between the airport and hotel was the chaos of the motorbikes. Here are some pictures of the trip I thought were cool.

The arrival countdown was pretty discouraging early on.

This is the screen on the seat in front of me on our Chicago-Tokyo flight. It played movies, TV shows, video games, music, etc. My favorite was the flight tracking though.  Right about here was a good feeling, about breaking the half way point on the flight path. The map would zoom in too, so it was really easy to tell when we were going south and my engineer senses were tingling noticing the tangent line going down.

This was pure relief. I can't even describe the feeling in my legs, even walking around every couple hours.

Obligatory wing pic.

Selfie time.

And Sam

Greg and I woke up around 5:30 today and I snapped this. Jet lag could definitely be worse; I think by tomorrow we'll be on schedule. This morning was pretty nice, Greg and I went to the gym and then went for a swim on the rooftop pool. Sometime this week I'll post a picture of that and of the outside of the hotel, but I didn't bring my phone to the swim. It is about to be breakfast time and after that we are headed to the University of Economics and Finance (which will from now on be UEF). After UEF we're going to the Embassy and then a formal dinner. These should be my first cultural experiences, so hopefully my next post will be more meaningful.