Before we went to our site visit, we had breakfast at this French bakery we found last week. It’s great because we can get 3 or 4 pastries for 2 dollars! Tuesday morning we went to the Vietnam version of the stock market. They were very busy since the morning was their busiest time, so our visit was very short. It seemed to me as if they had modeled their stock market after the New York Stock Exchange, though I'm not sure if we modeled ours off another country's or not. It was a lot of people on phones sitting in front of tickers watching stock prices go up and down, what I imagine our stock market was when it first started, but more hi-tech. Since we finished so quickly, we were able to spend the rest of the morning shopping and hanging out with some of the Vietnamese students who had come with us.
For the afternoon, we went to a company called Ascenx. It was and engineering company currently being run by expats who also shared their stories of getting out of Vietnam, and then going back to set up a business. Their company was contracted to update electronic parts that were outdated but needed to be repaired, such as replacing an old TV monitor with a new flat screen, though there would be electronic rewiring and such required. I thought it was a great experience, even though the logistics of the company were a little over my head. But I really enjoyed hearing about their stories, since I’ve never heard much about the life of Vietnamese refuges after the war. After the session, the CEO invited us all to coffee, in classic Vietnamese fashion. So we all went down to the coffee shop in the lobby of the building and chatted more. We ended up talking about everything from places to go at night to where to find a good burger in Vietnam. I think it was one of the better company visits because they were very personable and informal, so we really got to understand a different perspective on the relaxed atmosphere of doing Business in Vietnam.
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