Today was a very good day. We started out with a visit to Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP).
They have a really great business model and the services they offer are good for businesses wishing to setup factories and such. I was very impressed by the fact that they established a customs office on site as well as a technical training school that companies can draw graduates from or even setup their own curriculums at the school. It is also nice that they have housing there for anyone who wishes to live there, although they said most people who live there do not actually work at factories there. Another great incentive for setting up businesses here is the tax incentive and as VSIP pointed out, the intelligent, hard-working employees.
Our next visit was to II-VI. That visit was REALLY cool! It was so neat seeing heating/cooling components and laser lenses being manufactured. Seeing what will be car seat heating/cooling elements as well as coolers for electronics being manufactured was very interesting, especially because I’m not even familiar with that electronic component. In my group we then went to the lens manufacturing side and saw them cut the lenses from raw materials, then round he edges and do the extensive polishing process. We even looked in on a clean room where they apply the special coating to make the lenses pass 99.7% and above of the light shone through them (a considerable achievement considering average glass panes only allow 93% of the light through).
After these first two visits we had a nice lunch in the hotel and then went on our next company visit at EximBank. The people there were VERY welcoming and this visit was actually more interesting than I thought it would be considering that I find banks to be extremely boring usually. It was interesting hearing about people’s general distrust in banks and how they would typically bury money or hide it in their houses. But now with the open economy and banks people can put their money in banks and get credit cards to buy cars and houses, etc. What really surprised all of us was the 14% interest rate that the Vietnamese get (we were slightly saddened to learn that if we setup accounts we would only get 3%). All the staff including the tellers and the management at EximBank were extremely friendly and very welcoming. They even stuffed the girls’ purses with candy!
Another thing that impressed me at this bank was that they had refreshments and candy that they would bring over to their customers while they were doing their banking. Tonight we were left to find dinner on our own so we went to a restaurant recommended to us by Dr. Berman called Pho24 and actually ran into him while we were there. That has to be one of my favorite meals of this trip so far. Pho is a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and typically meat of some kind. I ordered pho with beef and a side or spring rolls and the meal was very delicious!
I have also been neglecting to do this over the past couple days, but I'd like to give a shout out to Tinh and Anh (I hope I'm spelling their names right). They have been traveling with us and translating sometimes and have been a great help with smoothing out kinks in the trip as well as helping us learn the language and culture here.
Looking forward to tomorrow's adventure...
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