Brains and Quail Fetus

Waking up to the heat as usual, our Friday morning wasn't really that out of the ordinary. We woke up, had breakfast, took some classes. and had lunch with a view again at the neighboring university. It's pretty crazy how it only takes 2-3 days to fall into a routine actually. Afterwards we took a bus to this thing.



It's a actually a memorial to the Vietnamese commandos who stormed to the embassy during the war at the site of the embassy which I thought was pretty cool. Later we went inside the U.S. consulate which is where the embassy used to be and saw the memorial to the soldiers who died in defense of the embassy. It was really cool to see this dynamic and how there's always two sides to the story of a war.

Going into the consulate we got to sit down and talk with some of the officers there about foreign services and.....career options with the foreign services. It was a bit off putting how much of a sales pitch it became but it was really cool hearing about U.S. to Vietnamese relations.

Afterwards everyone went to the American center to talk about life in America with some Vietnamese teenagers while I got to do some staying behind. Bryan, out program director, was worried about my health from a few days ago so we stopped by a clinic. The doctor was really nice and we had a nice conversation.

After the 20 minute checkup I got to go back to the hotel....by myself....for 2 hours. It wasn't that bad though. I rested up a bit and got some downtime.

The really interesting part of the day came later when the girls wanted to do their self-proclaimed "girl's night" so the guys decided to get together for dinner. I don't think guy's nights exists but we got as close as it gets to a guy's night that night. Bo, a student from UEF took us to this place.




A pretty messy affair, we had what is known as a "hot pot" and cooked our own food. The group had a collective decision to try to quail fetus and brain of something which just proved we had an adventurous group of young adults. The brain was kind of squishy but I didn't try the fetus. I'm told it was really good and some guys took one for the road. I don't like conclusions.

Club Lights

Following into a routine we started our morning with a quick breakfast and then taking a bus to the two classes at UEF. HOWEVER, this time we stopped at a Chinese temple first, you who would have guessed in Vietnam, which was really cool. The entire courtyard was huge with a giant tree in the center providing a canopy of leaves over the whole place. It was not unlike many Chinese pagodas with the Buddha statues and the incense burning which we got to participate in. There were also turtles.



Language class was entertaining as usual and the culture class was a lot more dry but interesting to listen to. Lunch was really good as it usually is and then we were off to our second company visit of the trip.

Probably the coolest tour of the trip, Glass Egg Digital Media proved to be a really fun time. The CEO, Phil Tran, was a refugee from the war and then came back and made it big. As game developers, Glass Egg sells 3D art to other game developers and does very well in the outsourcing section. Almost everyone in the office looked as if they were in the twenties and somewhat enjoying their job.

For the night life, we ate at a Korean BBQ style Vietnamese BBQ that proved to be one of the best dinners so far. Cooking a chunk of salmon turned out to be really hard in the end and much a mess had to be made before it was finally to be eaten.

What really made the night stand out was our trip to Lush, a night club owned by Glass Egg ironically. Because we went to the parent company, the manager comped most of our drinks and that was just wonderful. I spent most of my time on the dance floor busting moves with everyone else. It was really awesome to just get pumped up to the music and have a great time with everyone else. Dan somehow got stickers all over his body and was swagging it out pretty hard. For a night where no one got that drunk, we had a blast.

We're Dropping Like Flies

So after two days of being the only weakling of the group, this morning we found out that two of us got sick overnight and had to stay in. This was pretty concerning because you don't stay in if you're on vacation (basically) unless you were really sick. After hearing of these unpleasantries we headed over to UEF to have our two classes in the morning.

Our first class was a history class of the area around Ho Chi Minh City and how it was shaped by wars, occupations, and invasions over the years. The professor had a few colorful remarks regarding China which I found pretty interesting such as that China always tries to build the "biggest and tallest things". Vietnamese language class was pretty involved and fun as usual and then we went for our amazing lunches as usual.

Following that we went to listen to a guy from U.S. commercial services who definitely has the best job in the world. He talks with the Vietnamese government and U.S. companies for U.S. investment and always has something interesting or exciting happening. Regardless of how stressful the job is it was really cool to get to know this kind of thing while we're still early in college.

We finished our day by going to a nice Vietnamese restaurant that the ever wonderful Kate recommended. At this point, our host/friend/tour guide was single-handedly showing us the nice places to go in Ho Chi Minh City. Afterwards she took us to a cake place to get some fantastic deserts and then took us to a rain forest themed kind of drink place that was oozing with awesome. If you're reading this cheers you Kate, you're pretty amazing.

A Night Out in the Town

Feeling a lot better than yesterday it was a lot easier to keep up with the fast paced schedule that is Plus3 Vietnam. However, since I've been bitter for long enough about how sick I am and I feel bad about everyone worrying about me, I'll try not to talk about it anymore.

We stared the day with a history class of Saigon which was followed by break. During said break, I somehow got separated from everyone else and got to meet some really cool students from UEF. Afterwards we had another language class which was hilarious because the students were half the size of a lot of us. I could fit in pretty well with them however and the whole thing turned out to be a really funny experience as Americans tried to master the various basic tones of Vietnamese. We didn't do half bad....I think.

For lunch we ate at the same place as yesterday which still had a majestic view of everything. The food was delicious and we had a great bonding experience.

After a 40 minute bus ride we arrived at the first site visit of Phu My Hung which by itself was a beautiful place. We were greeted by a very snazzy looking presentation room and a fancy presentation where clay models lit up to show construction taking place. Afterwards the host showed us some of the views which were just beautiful and answered any questions we had. It was a very satisfying trip but I felt as if the tour wasn't all that exclusive to the public.

At 7, a lot of UEF students took us into the town with the first place being the "best" place for pho apparently. The noodles and the broth were excellent but the establishment looked a bit worn down. I guess that improved the charm of the pho. Once we were done, Kate, our field trip leader basically, took us to a park square where we got to try the street food of Vietnam.



Finally, after a sightseeing walk back to the hotel everyone but me went a beer market which was apparently wild. I really wish I had but I decided to call it a night then.

Vietnam continues to impress.

Day 1

Starting off with a bang.....or not

After a total of 30 hours in the plane we finally landed in Vietnam where the first thing I noticed right away was the humidity. Seriously you can taste that. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that plane trips can dehydrate you and I underestimated how fast Vietnam can sap all the water out of you so I became that one really sick person in the group....To everyone that was with me, I'm sorry about all the complaining.

After a surprisingly amazing breakfast at the Victory Hotel which is where we're staying I arrived at the University of Economics and Finance feeling okay at first. As our bus pulled in the students greeted us with hugs and...flower necklaces (I don't know what they're called). This was followed up with a welcome ceremony where traditional and more modern dance performances were to be had. Several distinguished members of Vietnam were there too including the Chairman of Education and Training of Vietnam. Throughout the whole thing I was extremely impressed with how big of a deal they made this and how much they just seemed to love us being there. I wished I could reciprocate there but I was just dumbfounded by the ceremony. After 1 million pictures we had a learning Vietnamese lesson where I started to feel extremely downtrodden. I'm pretty sure the girl next to me trying to help me learn was half concerned about me and half not amused with how I wasn't paying attention.

As lunch began I completely crashed and Bryan, our chaperon, had to drag me back to the hotel so I could recover. Thanks Bryan. Feeling somewhat better after drinking a massive amount of water and having a 5 hour nap I went with everyone else to the welcome dinner UEF provided for us. It was a really nice spread of Vietnamese style food but I couldn't really eat anything so that sucked. Also I came really close to throwing up once so that wasn't good. After the amazing dinner I mostly missed, we headed back to our hotel to rest for the next day.

I didn't take many pictures but here's one of a catholic church on our way to dinner.