An Urban Utopia

Day two in Ho Chi Minh City! This morning we attended a lecture at UEF on urban planning and development--I had never really thought much about it, so it was interesting to learn a lot about the problems that face HCMC as it has grown at a rapid rate since 1986 and what infrastructure is being developed to accommodate it. This was a nice segue into our first company visit this afternoon at Phu My Hung, which, in the last 20 years, has planned and built an extension of HCMC called Saigon South.

The presentation was awesome; filled with technology in a pristine building. It was almost kind of spooky how Saigon South is like a pre-utopia. There are multiple international schools, a shopping district, luscious greenery, and a number of commercial complexes. As the tour guides described it: "It is everything you need to live in one place." Safe to say it looked very different from the urban sprawl of HCMC; the buildings were all beautifully kept, the streets were clean and uncrowded. It was a very interesting presentation; the only thing that concerned me a lot was the marsh land that was built over to create Saigon South and the lack of concern for environmental sustainability.

Funnily enough, the giant rubber duck that cruised on the Allegheny River in September is visiting Saigon South this month! I guess I'm one of a special group who get to see this novelty in multiple locations!

We had another language class this morning... I'm getting better, and the whole subjects/addressing people is starting to make more sense. I sat by Julia, one of the Vietnamese students, who was super helpful, really funny, and very good at English. She's my first Vietnamese Facebook friend, we're buds :) Julia is taking us all out to dinner tonight, it's going to be a great time! Last night was a lot of fun too--lots of bonding between us students.

Like yesterday, the food has been amazing. I probably sound like a broken record with my reuse of all the synonyms I can think of for fantastic and delicious... But I guess the English language cannot adequately describe how tasty everything is. Today, the best/most exotic thing I at was a sweet potato soup/broth, which was bright purple. Because apparently that's the color of sweet potatoes? Ha I don't know. But it was scrumptious. Lots of love to everyone at home, I don't miss you too much yet (having too awesome of a time)!