Later in the morning, we went back to UEF to start our lectures. This lecture was all about the urban planning and development of the city and we spent a lot of time listening Dr Phuoc Tan, a chair from the Department of Urban Planning and Development in HCMC. He told us all about the current state of the city, and increasing population, the future of public tranportstion, etc. We made use of this time to learn all about what makes this city great, and he even made sure to tell us about the city's flaws as well. Speaking of the flaws in the city, Dr Phuoc told us all about the plans for Vietnam throughout the next 10 years. The most notable improvement to the city mentioned was pertaining to the public transportation. Currently, the people in the city travel using predominately motorbikes. This is definitely visible when outside. Despite all of the Mercedes-Benz and Audi dealerships that are all around the city, motorbikes are still just as prevalent, if not more prevalent than Toyota Camrys and Nissan Altimas are in the states. In fact, our advisor Dr Berman wound up getting hit by one while walking down the sidewalk a few years back.
After the lecture, we had a short break and were allowed to do whatever we wanted, be it inside or outside the school, as long as we were back to class on time. This was amazing because it allowed us to get a little more of a feel of what it would be like going to college in Vietnam. A few of us all went to a nearby cafe and got some much needed cà phê sữa đá, aka iced coffee (see? almost fluent!) So far, all of the coffee I've had here in Vietnam is so much better than coffee in America. After the coffee, we went back to another language class and learned more about the tones of the language, as well as some greetings. This was definitely a little different than language classes in America. Here, we had to get up to the front of the classroom with a partner and hold small conversations directly after being taught new material. Having only just learned the phrases made communicating that much more difficult.
Later in the day, after changing into some business casual attire, we all went to visit a development company called Phu My Hung. PMH builds business and residential complexes that they call city centers, as well as a few buildings laced throughout the city. The city centers are like small cities really. They really seem like attempts at making utopian societies for all of the expats and Vietnamese that choose to live there. Speaking of which, only half of the people living in the residential developments are expats from Australia, Korea, and Singapore, while the other half is composed of the Vietnamese. Many of them are foreign investors with stake in Vietnam.
After we toured the Phu My Hung facility, we had some downtime to chill in the hotel and explore the city. In the evening, we went out to dinner with some of the Vietnamese students. They took us to an amazing phở restaurant called Phở Hòa and I finally had some amazing Vietnamese phở. I got the phở nam (even more fluent than before) which is pho with well done beef flank. At first, I had no clue how to eat it, especially since there was a spoon plus chopsticks at the table, along with a plate full of what I thought was just random leaves. Luckily, there was a native sitting across the room who guided us, motioning what to do with the chopsticks and spoon. He even communicated to us that we should put some of the leaves in there, as well as all of the sauces that were there - I have no clue what the sauces were either. The phở, even after all of the random additions, was amazing. Afterwards, we wont out to find some street food, which was all amazing. The only thing that I knew the name of was the fried corn which was definitely my favorite. So all in all, it was an amazing day filled with a lot of amazing food! |
| Beth's phở (mine was almost gone before I remembered to take a picture) |
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| Phu My Hung |
Awesome!
ReplyDeleteThis is sooo cool!!!
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