Woke up and got dressed for another site visit this morning and then went down to breakfast . I decided to try the pho - I wanted to make sure to try it while I'm here - I like the noodles, there is just a spice in it that is a little too strong for me. After breakfast we got on the bus and drove a really short distance to Viet Capital Securities Company. We arrived and walked into a room crowded with people busy on cell phones and watching stock market screens. Even though i'm a business major, the whole thing was so confusing. I really had no idea what was going on. We did learn however, that it was not a good morning for the stocks so that is why people were so crazed. A woman gave us a brief overview of what happens in the building but it was hard to hear much of what the translator said because of all the buzz around us. Soon after arriving we left, way ahead of schedule. As a result, we decided to go shopping at the Tax Center, the building where Tin took Julie to go shopping last night. The first few floors were like a regular department store but the top floor was similar to the Ben Thanh Market. Kyle and I went shopping for our moms - he found large wooden cranes for his mom and I got my mom a small mahjong set. It worked out well because the women put everything in the same bag so Kyle ended up carrying my heavy mahjong set. I also bought coasters for my dad and a magnet for the house. After wandering around for a while and seeing that all of the different people were selling pretty much the same exact stuff we left. Five minutes after leaving the Tax center we realized we were missing David and some of the UEF kids so we turned around to find him. The only good part about this was that we got to go back to the air conditioning. It was so hot outside today. It gets hard to compare the heat of the days to one another but today was definitely one of the hotter days. An overview of the next hour: the whole group walked to the really expensive embroidary store that Julie wanted to go to and then everyone but Kyle, Julie and Sarah decided to go on to the jersey store. I don't think I have ever sweated so much in my life. All we did was walk. and walk some more. and guess what? we never found it. By the time we made it back to the hotel, we were all soaking wet with sweat. Unfortunately, I couldn't get back into my room because Julie had the key so I sat in Ashley and Elizabeth's room and tried to cool off and let my dress dry before we had to meet for lunch in the hotel lobby. I stuck with rice and 3 fried shrimp and 2 bananas. Not very exciting but oh well. We then boarded the bus and drove to Ascenx Technologies.
What was really nice about our presentation at Ascenx is that the presentation on the actual company was relatively short because we also got to hear the CEOs' stories. Both of the CEOs left the country as little boys (one 5 and the other 10; one in 1968, the other 1975). Their stories were really interesting because they had struggle, and hardship and disappointment yet we were able to see where they were today. Both recieved American educations and became naturalized citizens and were even able to pay back the loan that got them out of Vietnam. Now, they are back in the country they once had to flee in the middle of the night on a fish boat running their own successful company. Just as an interesting fact i learned: most Vietnamese can write in english better than they can speak it because they have no one to really practice speaking english to but people can correct their writing. I thought that was interesting. After the presentation the CEOs invited us to have coffee with them downstairs which was really nice. Overall the whole thing was very casual and laid back and therefore one of our best site visits even if it wasnt a subject i am interested in.
When we got back to the hotel everyone was ready to go out for dinner at Black Cat but I could not keep my eyes open any longer so Andrew and I decided to meet for dinner in about an hour giving me time to sleep. When he came to wake me up, I was still exhausted but also knew i should eat. We took off in the direction of a restaurant on pasteur street but after a minute or two of not seeing pasteur street (Andrew has always had problems finding it) decided to just turn around and go to Nam Phan. We had a very relaxing, filling dinner there with good conversation. I had the beef with noodles again and clams. The dinner wasn't cheap but it was worth it. When it came time to pay the people working there were definitely confused because I'm sure they thought it was a date and Andrew just kept making me give him more cash since my dinner was way more expensive. Everyone came back from Black Cat talking about how delicious the burgers were - even better than O'Brians - and we all got ready to go out to Lush for free drinks at Lady's Night. The only problem was that we decided to take two cabs and when we got there we found out there was a 100 dong cover for guys and we didnt know what the rest of the group would want to do and their taxi didnt come for at least 20 minutes. We talked to some people from the Netherlands as we waited and eventually everyone got there. We all decided to go in and had a really fun night.
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