Final Blog

For the most part, the professional businesses we visited seemed similar to those in the United States.  The businesses we visited seemed to be made up of the wealthiest people in Vietnam.  For example, everyone was dressed professionally while at work.  The businesses all gave off a wealthy feel.  On the other hand, the stores we would shop at in our everyday routine had very bad working conditions.  They were all dirty and just unpleasant to walk into.  I didn’t notice much discrimination in the workplace though.  It caught my eye that Navibank only had female tellers working and the people giving the presentation were all females too.  Also, there was one part of the factories in II VI that had only females working.  Other than that, I noticed no racial or other types of discrimination.  A few of the businesses informed us about their employee benefits that stuck out to me.  Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park had some outstanding pluses to working there.  There’s like a whole, little town inside the industrial park!  Aside from the housing offered to employees, there are all sorts of recreational facilities, such as, restaurants, shops, a bank, and a postal office and police station right outside the park.  Such benefits make businesses more attractive to employees.

Having a broad education is crucial to understanding engineering and business on a global scale.  In this day and age, more and more businesses are expanding internationally.  Therefore, knowledge in certain areas, such as foreign language and culture, are important to have.  When communicating with branches in other countries, you will need such skills in order to be as successful as possible.  One thing I noticed about the UEF curriculum was how English classes were required for all students.  Being able to speak fluent English as a Vietnamese native will set you aside from those who cannot.  Since there are many countries around that world that speak English over Vietnamese, these English-speaking students will not suffer from the language barrier.  Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park prepares students in the Eastern International University with necessary skills to succeed in business in Vietnam.  VSIP is the location of an array of different businesses that require certain skills.  Since EIU is located within VSIP, there is more knowledge of which skills in particular are most valued in being successful in the business world.  Just like UEF, every student is required to take English.  It is apparent that the more knowledgeable students are more prosperous.

Some aspects of people’s jobs are learned prior to employment, whereas other skills are learned on the job.  There are general studies that everyone is required to take in school, such as English, which are used in their everyday endeavors.  Other, more field specific, abilities are learned at the time of employment during training sessions.  For example, the factory workers at II VI probably learned their most used skills when they were hired.  Each person has a different task that they just repeat over and over again countless times each day.  Tasks such as how to use certain machines or how to assemble small objects together are not taught in school.  Also, many Vietnamese cannot afford to go to school so they do not have the type of knowledge necessary for some higher ranked jobs.  These people must find jobs that will teach you everything you need to know in order to work there.  Just like in the United States, some people find jobs that have nothing to do with their major.  For example, my father was an accounting major but ended up working for a commodities company.  He had the basic knowledge needed to work for Louis Dreyfus, but all the schooling he went through to get to this place was irrelevant.  This will happen in Vietnam too.  With the economy we have today, people will take any job they can get.

In my opinion, I saw that people kept their social life separate from their professional life.  For example, one of the professionals from II VI had kept in touch with one of the Pitt students and asked if we wanted him to show us around the city a little bit.  When we went out with him it was strictly social.  We didn’t talk about business, it was all about what’s going on around the city and it was on a more personal level.  On the other hand, while he was giving us a presentation and tour of his company it was all business.  As for their knowledge of the United States, they seemed sort of informed.  They weren’t really aware of some of the current events going on today, but for the most part they knew the United States geographically.  Students would ask what part of America I was from and when I replied with Connecticut, quite a few of them knew where that was.  I was very surprised by that since Connecticut seems like sort of a pointless state to most.  Before I knew I was coming to Vietnam I had no knowledge whatsoever of the country.  I couldn’t even tell you the capital.  Vietnamese students seem to be more informed of the United States than I am of Vietnam. 

I think combining business and engineering students in this trip was a clever idea.  I saw it as an opportunity broaden my knowledge of different disciplines.  If it were just business students, it would have been a trip learning only things that I’m familiar with.  Adding engineering into the mix allowed me to be informed of topics I know nothing about.  I had no background in engineering whatsoever.  I didn’t even know there were different types of engineering until the first pre-departure meeting we had.  Visiting companies, such as II VI, that focused mainly on engineering would have been pointless if it were just business students.  We wouldn’t have been able to generate such relevant questions to ask, which the engineering students took care of.  Also, when visiting business oriented companies, sometimes the engineering students would look at it from a different perspective and it opened my mind to new things I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.  Even the business students helped to do that.  For example, at Navibank, a lot of the business students are more knowledgeable than I am so I had learned a lot just by the questions that they had asked.  Working in a team of different interests has helped to open my eyes to different things and made the experience of traveling abroad an overall more rewarding experience.

Day 12- May 24, 2013

Today was our last day in Vietnam!  We began the day with a soccer and basketball game against the UEF club teams.  Soccer we tied them 4-4.  I'm pretty sure they were going easy on us though.  For our first time playing soccer together, we weren't half bad!  It was so funny watching the game because a lot of us don't play soccer.  After we played basketball, but I don't even know who won or what the score was.  By that point everyone was hot and tired from the soccer match.  This afternoon a few of us went out to lunch with some Vietnamese students. We went to some Vietnamese restaurant, which was alright.  I got a beef skewer and it didn't even taste like beef so I didn't eat it.  While walking to and from the restaurant we stopped to see the little puppies in cages on the side of the road.  They're the cutest little guys I have ever seen.  There are so many squished in a little cage in this heat though.  I feel so bad for them, they must be miserable.  I wanted to take one home so badly, seeing as they were only $100, but I don't think my parents would go for that.  Tonight we went to dinner on a boat on the river.  On the boat there was live music, a fire dancer, and flamenco dancers.  It was great being able to spend the last night all together with the staff that helped us out and made this trip all possible.  As much as I want to go home, this trip was a great experience.  I learned so much, met so many new people, and traveled parts of a new country I have never been to.  It was an eye opening experience, seeing as I have never been to a place even remotely close to Vietnam.  This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I'm so happy I did this.

Day 11- May 23, 2013

Today we had a Vietnamese language test.  We had to go to the front of the class with a partner and say some numbers, ways to say hello depending on age, ask each other 3 questions, and recite a short paragraph about yourself and your experience in Vietnam.  In my opinion, that's a lot considering we've been learning the language for two weeks.  After class a few of us went to the Ben Thanh Market.  I had never been there before and I thought it was a lot better than the market we went to in Chinatown.  It was less crowded, but the vendors tried harder to sell you things.  I don't like the whole market atmosphere because I'd rather shop in peace on my own and I don't particularly enjoy having people touch and grab me when I'm looking around.  At night, we went to a nice dinner at the Rex Hotel with Dr. Berman.  We had a table on the roof with a nice view of the city.  This place was expensive and made me feel like we were all high rollers.  It was an awesome way to spend one of our last nights.  After dinner we met up the Dennis, the presentor from II VI, and his son and he took us bar hopping.  This was quite an experience seeing as I've never been bar hopping before.  We probably ended going to between 5-10 bars total.  It was cool seeing all these bars for like a half hour at a time and then going to the next one.  I wish we could have done this earlier in the trip because then we would have known about more places to go out to!  The coolest bar we went to was probably the Emergency Room.  It was a themed bar where all the waitresses and bartenders were dressed up as nurses.  I'd never seen a themed bar like this before.  After I got back to the hotel, I was in the hallway and I saw a bat fly up the stairs.  It was so freaky, how does a bat even get in a hotel?  That was pretty much my cue that it was time to go to sleep at that point.

Day 10- May 22, 2013

Last night we went to dinner at and Italian restaurant and out to Lush.  Dinner was by far the best meal here to date.  I got spinach raviolis and they were the most delicious raviolis I have ever eaten.  They put my parent's raviolis to shame.  Later on we all went back to the club, Lush.  It was ladies night so all the girls got in for free and got free drinks until 12:00.  The bartender ended up cutting some of us off because they saw us getting free drinks for guys.  Today we went on two company visits.  The first one was Newport, which is a trade port that's run by the Navy.  Since I've taken two semesters of economics, it was interesting seeing the floor where exports and imports are shipped and delivered.  For lunch we went to some restaurant near the companies we visited.  It was pretty good and nice to get to a different lunch restaurant since we go to the same place every day for lunch.  After we visited a real estate company whose current project is building apartments.  These apartments were beautiful!  The whole set up was like a resort.  There was 5 tall buildings arranged in a circle with a big pool area in the center.  Tonight a few of us went to an America restaurant called Zest.  It was quite the experience.  We were the only people in the restaurant and the staff was all over us.  They took our pictures to upload to Facebook and there was this one staff member that was up on the second floor sniping candid pictures of us while we were eating.  I got the vibe that they don't really get too many customers in that place.  My meal was delicious though.  I'd definitely go back there.

Day 9- May 21, 2013

This morning we had culture and language class.  In culture class we learned that Northern Vietnam eats dogs.  All I could think about is my dog, Chester, and how I could never even think about eating him.  Some of the foods here I would never even think to eat, like ostrich, but dog just takes it to a whole new level.  I think of dogs as pets, not food.  After lunch we visited Navibank.  The whole presentation was in Vietnamese and one of the UEF students translated it into English for us as.  It was different listening to a whole presentation in only Vietnamese, but it was interesting seeing how fast a student could translate it.  That would be very hard to do.  I learned that a lot of Vietnamese do not trust banks so they keep their money at home and refuse to use savings accounts.  I can't imagine keeping all my money in a safe at home where it's so easily accessible.  I also noticed that there were only women working at Navibank.  There were three women that were a part of the presentation and then there were only women workings as tellers when we first walked in.  Most of the companies we have visited have been made up of mostly men, so it was different seeing only women.  After the bank some of us went to the post office to get some souvenir shopping done.  There was a lot of cool jewelry and handcrafted things for your house.  I bought a lot of stuff for my friends and family there.  Tonight we're going to go out to dinner and figure the rest from there.  We don't have to meet tomorrow until 9:30, so I get to sleep in!!!!

Day 8- May 20, 2013

Today we went to the Presidential Palace, which is equivalent to the White House in America.  We didn't have an organized tour so we all just wandered around the building.  There were a lot of big, fancy rooms that we could look in.  The view from the top was pretty and looked down a street in Ho Chi Minh City.  Then we went to the post office which did not seem equivalent to an American post office.  The only parts I saw were souvenir shops, so I bought a few things.  Later on today we went to a market in Chinatown.  I have never felt more claustrophobic in my life.  There were vendors cramped together with not even a meter wide aisle in between.  In the aisle there were people walking both directions while other vendors were trying to make their way through with boxes and trying to stock up each of their stands.  We had to bargain in Vietnamese and they spoke very little to no English, so the Vietnamese students had to help.  Safe to say I didn't buy anything here.  This experience was unlike any other I have ever had.  After we got back to the hotel, I walked around shops a few blocks from the hotel and shopped around there.  I went mostly into clothing stores which were more Americanized and a shop with some cool Vietnamese souvenirs.  Tonight we went to a restaurant called Ti Ti, which was a delicious French restaurant.  The menu didn't seem very French at all, but I was very satisfied with my pasta with beef.  The taxi ride to the restaurant was brutal.  We squished 9 people in the cab for a 70,000 dong cab ride, whereas the ride back was only 40,000 dong.  The first driver took us all around thinking we wouldn't notice while I was sitting across three people squeezed in the back.  I'm exhausted now so I'm not sure what I'm going to do the rest of the night.

Day 7- May 19, 2013

Today we had a day trip to Vung Tao.  We took a hydrofoil down the river to the beach area, which was about an hour and a half.  Going down the river was pretty cool because we got to see a lot of scenery that we haven't seen before.  Once we got to Vung Tao we went hiking.  Our first short hike was to a Jesus statue.  This hike wasn't bad--it was only like 10 minutes, not even.  Then we went to a Buddhist Pagoda.  It was interesting seeing how different religions are practiced because my family isn't religious at all.  There was a lady there selling small birds that you could release into the wild.  It symbolized something in their religion, but I didn't hear exactly what it was.  Our second hike was harder.  It was 1000 steps in the scorching hot weather to another Jesus statue.  I don't think I've ever sweat this much in my life.  I was sweating so much that I didn't even feel it anymore.  The views from this hike were gorgeous though.  All the sweating was definitely worth it once we jumped in the ocean at the beach.  The beaches were gorgeous and the water was so warm and relaxing.  I bought a raft and just chilled in the water all day.  I also got freshly squeezed watermelon juice which was probably the best juice I have ever tasted.  Tonight we went to a restaurant but I forget the name of it.  I got a $3.00 steak and the best chicken wings.  I'd say this was one of the best dinners I've had here so far.