Bad bargains and karaoke

Today we started the day with a Vietnamese language class which was really fun because we learned how to barter in Vietnamese. It got pretty rowdy when we tried to negotiate prices with each other and seemed like a really useful experience. When we finally got to Ben Tanh market which was supposed to be a really famous flea market, it looked really upscale for some reason. For a flea market the vendors just looked as if they had some pretty quality inventories but the place was really packed. It looked your average flea market but with three times the density in vendors. The vendors were really aggressive sellers and if it wasn't for my friend Ariel I would have gotten cornered really hard. I guess I just didn't expect prices to go lower than 50 percent which they were supposed to. For lunch we had this.

For our professional trip today we went to Vina Capital which is an investment firm. We learned about Vina Capital Foundation which is an offshoot and sponsors charitable activities. One of these of note is improving the community by sponsoring young girls to get an education. We found out that empowering girls greatly helps the neighborhood and community she lives in. The foundation's overhead is covered by Vina Capital which does your average investment portfolios which grows an investor's money while taking a commission. 

Later, Chris, Malik, Akhil, and I caved by deciding to head over to Mickey D's for a quick bite of what we were used to. Honestly the food was a lot better than I would like to admit. We did feel guilty however about wasting our time in Vietnam for something so common worldwide such as McDonald's. 

This is what guilt looks like

After some time resting we ate at a pancake place for dinner. They weren't really pancakes but fried rice patties with shrimp and other good stuff in them. I was pretty full but the food was good. This is when the night really starts getting crazy. We ended up going to some karaoke place which was actually really fun. Everyone sang their heart out especially Allen with dancing queen. My words at least cannot do the entire justice for just how pumped everyone was and how much fun Allen was having being the dancing queen. Seriously he's famous for it now. Here's some pictures I got.

Finally a few of us went to club Apocalypse which was supposed to be biggest and baddest club in southeast Asia. It was really fun going there but their water was way too expensive. 90,000 dong! Mac Qua!