May 11, 2010--

Today, after we ate breakfast, we hopped in the bus and headed off to the UEF again. We met up with our Vietnamese friends and we talked for a while. Our guest lecturer was late, so we had some free time to head to the food court and talk more to our Vietnamese friends. I went down to the food court and bought a energy drink and Mentos and it only cost me 75 cents. Once again the Vietnamese students move out of your way and respect us immensely and I am very grateful that they are so considerate.

Our lecture was on Urban Planning and Developement in Ho Chi Minh City presented by Du Phuoc Tan who is the Chair of the Department of Urban Management Studies at Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies. He was hard to understand but we had a handout of the slides in which we could take notes on. The powerpoint was very informative and offered many statistics and growing trends of Vietnam specifically Ho Chi Minh City. He talked about the shifts in personal finance and spending as well as shifts in the GDP, imports and exports.

After the presentation, we ate lunch at the University. They prepared, once again, a feast for us. This was definitely the best meal I've had so far in Vietnam. They had noodles and beef, rice, bread and amazing spicy soup with potatoes and beef in it. They gave us bottles of water to drink, which seems to be a trend in Vietnam. Everywhere we go, there are bottles of water on the table at school, at the cafeteria, at the hotel, and at site visits.

After lunch we drove out to the new development of South Saigon, to Phu My Hung Corporation where, Stone Shih the Manager International Marketing, gave us a presentation about the company. As soon as we got there we went out to the balcony of the twelfth floor, where Phu My Hung's office space is, where we could look over all of South Saigon and could see Ho Chi Minh City in the background. We took multiple pictures there and it was really cool to see where the new buildings of Phu My Hung Corporation are being built and where the previous infrastructure already is.

Phu My Hung is a development company responsible for many new projects in South Saigon. They were created in order to manage all the contractors and projects that are extending the city of Ho Chi Minh into South Saigon. They are creating many housing projects as well as commercial office space. They are creating an entire new community as an extension of Ho Chi Minh City. In my opinion, it seems that Phu My Hung is completely redefining Ho Chi Minh City and how people live and work.

After the presentation, we all checked out the model of South Saigon that they had on display in the front of the conference room. It was cool to see where the different projects were in relations to each other and served as a great pretext to our bus tour of South Saigon. Our bus tour took us around South Saigon showing us the different developments and the future developments. We ended the bus tour by visiting the future site of UEF which is right next to many Catfish but just like the rest of South Saigon will be built up as a future development.

That concluded our visit to Phu My Hung. I thought this visit was very applicable to engineering because with the future business developments and appealing housing options, many companies can now view Vietnam as a country on the rise, and an excellent place for businesses to migrate too. Along with these advantages, Vietnam offers cheap labor and a competitive business market. Corporations can now move to Vietnam to take advantage of the new business developments provided by Phu My Hung. In turn this would help raise Vietnam's GDP and international reputation.

After our visit, we headed back to the hotel to chill for the rest of the night. We ordered pizzas and I was surprised at how good it tasted. It was very thin but there was also a lot of basil, oregano, and rich tomato sauce on it. It was very good and was a nice break from the constant Vietnamese food, as good as it is. After we hung out for a while, the rest of the group went to Apocalypse Now, a club in District 1, but since I have barely slept since we have gotten here, I stayed in and went to sleep early since Glass Egg Digital Media site visit is tomorrow.