A White Sea

As many as half a million South Vietnamese died from 1955 to 1975. Today I saw the graves of a portion of those at a martyr's cemetery in Cu Chi, a district rendered a wasteland with bombs, napalm, and agent orange by the American forces. I've been to soldiers' cemeteries before in the US, but this was different knowing that we were the cause of this loss of life. It's chilling to view the pristine and orderly grid of graves melt into just a pattern of red and white in the distance. In school, we don't put that much emphasis on the Vietnam War... I felt as if suddenly and at once recognized the extent of havoc caused to both sides in the name of ideology. I felt so deeply sad.

We spent the majority of the day at the Cu Chi tunnels, touring the intricate systems of underground bunkers built by the Viet Cong. It was about a 2.5 hour bus ride out of the city, and the view was beautiful (especially the farm lands--so green). When we arrived, they sat us down to watch a movie about the citizen's of Cu Chi's part in fending off the "devil" Americans. It was disturbing to see the intense hate and propaganda built into the film paired with cheerful music and the always smiling faces of Vietnamese diggers and soldiers. The tunnels themselves were so dark and tiny--they have been expanded for Western tourists! The traps and oppressing earth walls made me so aware of how terrifying it would have been during the war for tunnel rats. Plus there were some fun creatures like snakes, bats, and spiders down there... Anyway, we ate lunch on a dock on the river. What a view. Even with the terrible atrocities that have occurred in this country, it has to be one of the most beautiful places I've been.

The view of the Saigon River from our boat-restaurant

My Little Piece of Heaven

I can't believe we're almost half-way done with our time here in Vietnam! It makes me really sad actually: I have loved every experience with this country and the group of us here is really awesome. No company visits today, we spent the whole day at UEF: In the morning a professor from the Vietnam National University lectured on the Mekong River Delta's culture, economy, and environmental issues. I feel really lucky to be able to hear this kind of stuff because I really never would at home. I was especially interested that he served in the National Assembly for 10 years... the opacity of the Vietnamese government intrigues me a lot. After the lecture, we had another language class. I think I'm getting worse.

In the afternoon we played games with the UEF English club... Our team won (pretty handily, definitely cheating)!! We danced the chicken dance and the Macarena, which I definitely haven't done in years. Ha, but apparently they're super popular right now in Vietnam! I was exhausted when I got back, so a bunch of us relaxed and got full body massages. Oh my god. I cannot express how wonderful it felt and how free my muscles feel. Best. Ever. Ate at a random Japanese place that was fine. Today was kind of chill, not too much happened. Sleep tight!

Focused on the Future

The view from a Glass Egg office

It's pretty late and I'm exhausted, so today's going to be a short post; bear with me. We headed to UEF this morning for a lecture on Vietnamese history/culture and another language class. The lecture was fantastic and just so interesting!! I found myself wondering why I like European history so much if Asian history seems so much longer and more intricate. The guest lecturer was from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City and he actually reminded me a lot of my mom's siblings. Their mannerisms and way of speaking were SO similar. He spoke about the evolution of the different ethnic groups and the language through the various invasions from China, France, America, etc. Today was an especially interesting day for this lecture, as tensions are rising between Vietnam and China in the East Vietnamese/South China Sea (see this article). However, I found what he said about Vietnam and its animosity toward its past invaders very wise and accurate after being so welcomed by the Vietnamese people. He said, we cannot take into account past hate to make decisions for our future, otherwise we don't get anywhere. I know he meant this especially because Vietnam is a small country often threatened by large powers (China), but it's really true for real life. Was that getting too deep? Sorry, I'll keep it light.

After the lecture and class, we visited Glass Egg Digital Media, a Vietnam-based video game developer (outsourcing). They also will be launching a Southeast Asian Tinder and a couple of game apps within about a year. The culture there is really cool; it promotes a lot of creativity. It's also interesting because Glass Egg is the basically the first of its kind in the world and has been über successful.

Today was an awesome day food-wise, I ate both crocodile (tastes like chicken) and frog legs (also chicken). The seafood is great too, the squid and octopus tentacles are my favorite. A couple of us ate dinner at this barbecue street joint and I had the goat. It was tasty. That's all for today...

Real-Life Mario Kart

Interesting fact about Ho Chi Minh City: For every 1,000 people, there are 675 scooters and motorcycles. For comparison's sake, in an Indian city like Chennai, it's around 175 or something. Other than taxis and trucks, people don't really drive cars here. It's basically Mario Kart in real life. Except this is no rainbow road... Anyway, today Julia took me on her scooter to dinner! It was really fun; I hadn't really done anything like it since my cousins used to take me out as a kid in India and Garrett got a great picture of it (will post later). Dinner was a little disappointing because I love Asian food so much and we went to a quasi-French American place. I also realized my stomach has already grown accustomed to super light Vietnamese food and was not prepared to eat salmon cheese (salmon with cheese sauce, but I thought how it was listed on the menu was funny). We went to a karaoke bar after dinner, which was really fun. It's an interesting concept: You and your friends reserve a private room and can dine inside the room with your own TV, mics, speaker system, etc. We were all really tired, so we called it a night kind of early so I hope we can do it next week!

There were two company visits today, more up my alley as an engineering student. We visited the first Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park, located ~45 minutes outside of HCMC and one of the factories in the park, run by the laser optics company II-VI. I really enjoyed touring the factory (so much electrolysis, I was proud to say I could understand what was going on) and seeing the product (basically a semi-conducting ceramic and ZnSe sandwich) in its various stages from beginning to end. It was exactly like a show my dad and I watch called How It's Made. I seriously could have filmed it and submitted the tape. It was also very interesting to learn about the professional culture in Vietnam and the relationship between internationally-based companies and the Vietnamese government. I especially found it interesting that they regularly take naps during the lunch break. Sounds great to me!

We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the Binh Duong. Lots of seafood--the fried octopus was especially good. It neighbored a former ceramics factory (now a small mall) where we could look at some porcelain figurines and such... Some of them were hilarious(ly weird). Tons of Disney ones. I was so exhausted when we got back, I passed out for two hours before dinner. All in all a good day--we visit Glass Egg tomorrow (the company I researched) so I'm pretty excited! Chào bên!

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)!

The True Land of Smiles

Well to all my family and friends virtually accompanying me on my adventures in Vietnam, welcome! Or should I say "xin chào"? Nope. We had our first Vietnamese class at the University of Economics and Finance (UEF), and let me tell you that it is hard. Hopefully I'll have mastered a couple of handy phrases by the time my two weeks are up.

Our flight path over the North Pole

So I'll start at the beginning: We left from Pittsburgh on Saturday morning... only 21 hours of flight time later we landed here in Ho Chi Minh City! The sixteen hour flight wasn't too miserable; I think I was so excited I blocked out all the negative parts of being stranded in a metal cylinder for almost a day. At least the jet lag hasn't hit me too hard. The city is beautiful--vibrant and green. It reminds me a lot of Chennai (where my family lives in India)... the smells and sights aren't too foreign in that regard.

The Victory Hotel is great so far and the food is delicious! Cannot underscore how yummy everything has been... The foodie in me is in hog heaven. I'm determined to try everything at least once so that I can experience it all--I've already planned what I'm eating at the hotel's breakfast tomorrow morning.

After breakfast we headed to UEF where the students welcomed us with a medley of dances wearing traditional garb from different regions of Vietnam. I'd only seen the ao zai, so it was really interesting to see the other outfits and hats (pictures to come; I wore one of them). One of the students also sang "I'm Yours"--Abe was put on the spot to join in until he forgot the words... it was hilarious, but goes to show how inviting everyone has been! We also got shown up because apparently we haven't brushed up on our MJ. He has this song "Heal the World" that none of the Pitt students knew, but all the UEF kids did. Ha.

Later, we headed to one of the classrooms to butcher their language with our American accents. Just kidding, we tried desperately to learn some Vietnamese and failed miserably. The UEF students were cracking up because we must have sounded so pathetic. Their vowels and tones are so different than any other language I've learned... Makes up (and more) in difficulty for the omission of tense, conjugation, and plurality.

Post-class we ate lunch at the UEF canteen. Repeat of breakfast, so tasty. Except for the fish bones, I loved it. Looking forward to more Vietnamese food tonight at Wrap and Roll. Our afternoon was spent at the US Consulate, which is on the grounds of the former US Embassy and location of the part of the Tet Offensive. The tour and learning about the history associated with the place was cool to hear, but the most interesting part was talking to the foreign service officers. They really get into the thick of things trying to navigate the political and economic climate of their country post; I'm really intrigued... I wonder if they'd take an engineer. I may have also been drawn in because they were all coincidentally coordinating wearing purple.

The Vietnamese memorial to all the Viet Cong who died during the siege of the US Embassy,
directly outside of the US Consulate

We've been touring around HCMC in a UEF bus with Tin Tin, our Vietnamese leader. He's very small (like everyone else, I feel like a giant) and enthusiastic. It really struck me as true what one of the officers, Sean, said at the consulate: Vietnam is the real land of smiles (as opposed to Thailand, which used this phrase to attract tourists). I'm really looking forward to the next two weeks, I hope you all can enjoy the ride with me!