Vietnam Business Trip! - Final Entry

Vietnam 3rd and 4th day (2nd and 3rd dec)

(i've been grossly neglecting my vietnam trip entries, i better blog abt it before i forget what even happened!)

On the 3rd day, we headed down to VSIP(Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park). It is a joint venture between vietnam and singapore, as you obviously can tell from the name. They will assist you in setting up your investment in Vietnam, there are also tax incentives for foreign investments in Vietnam. It was kinda boring though, i was too distracted trying to make phone calls to postpone my interview timing that i didn't really hear what the speaker was talking about. i do know for one, kotex is situated in VSIP. lolx.

After the visit, we had lunch at Pho24, or was it Pho2000? arh, whatever, they're both the same thing. Both restaurants sell pho, which is the most famous dish in Vietnam. The beef slices aren't that nice though. Pho 2000 was once visited by Bill Clinton in 2000(hence the name). The restaurant is obviously very proud of that fact and has Bill Clinton's face pasted all over its walls! They even changed their name to commemorate the event -_-"

After the visit, we went to Cu chi tunnels. Now this was one of the higlights of my trip! A brief description of cu chi tunnels:

"Cu chi is about 40km northwest of ho chi minh city in southern Vietnam. The cu chi tunnels is an elaborate underground community made up of 250km tunnels and chambers under the city. The tunnels were dug with simple tools like hoes and spades and bare hands during the French Occupation in 1940s and further expanded during the Vietnam War is 1960s to provide refuge for the Cu Chi people against the American's bombings"

The Cu Chi people were an amazing buncha people who were very tough and endured life under underground for years and years. They ate, slept, planned attacks, healed their sick, got married, gave birth all in the narrow and dark underground tunnels. After i had a first hand experience with the narrow and very tiny tunnels, i am in awe at their resilience. I would never have been able to stand living in the tunnels for even a day.

Look at the hole on top, the Vietnam solider demonstrated to us how the Cu Chi people would enter their homes underground. The hole is super tiny. even i, with my small stature, felt too claustrophobic to even try entering the hole.

In the tunnels, the Vietnamese also installed several land mines in case the Americans managed to infiltrate the tunnels and hence, the Cu Chi villagers living underneath were constantly living in fear. They had to remember the various positions of the bombs or they could risk stepping on a land mine.

We were brought around to see the various kinds of death traps that the Cu Chi people invited to defend themselves against the Americans.

This is one of the traps, it's a revolving platform and any soldier that accidentally steps on it will fall into a row of deadly spikes below.

This is quite disgusting, you see the round platform?? When someone steps on it, the platform slides downwards and the 4 spikes will immediately extend and pierce into the guy's foot.

Other examples of deadly traps

Right picture: you might be curious how this trap works, it is invented for the Vietnamese housewives at home. It is, as the picture says, a door trap whereby the woman would swing the trap onto any American solider that tried to come in through the door. The spikes would then pierce right into their bodies. very brutal.

I wish i had more pictures of the other traps to show you all, unfortunately the photos cames out blurry but i'll soon be getting the collated set of photos from the others so i might be able to show you guys when i get the disc.

If you were wondering how the Cu Chi people managed to breathe underneath, take a look at the breathing hole! Can you spot it?? It's the crack beneath the tree. They have it at every 10m intervals.

(left to right pic: shoes that the cu chi people wore, these were the miniature sized ones that we could buy as a souvenoir, the cu chi people obviously had bigger feet -_-", and on the right is a dummy demonstration as to how the cu chi people made gun powder i think)

we got to try the kind of food that the cu chi people survived on during the Vietnam war. They ate tapioca, which is one of my fave food actually...i think i might do very well in war, haha. The woman had a bag of rice, which they would sometimes cook and mix with water in order to replenish their strength.But they had to be very thrifty in using the rice as that was all they had. a small pouch. not the kind which we see in supermarkets. duh



A typical Cu Chi woman with her black uniform.

We tried crawling through the tunnels and it was a terribly claustrophic experience, i had to literally go down on all fours just to get through, i would imagine the guys having a tougher time. Apparantly there were bats inside too, luckily i didn't bring a camera or any source of light with me so all i could see was pitch black.

That night, we couldn't take it any longer, our backs and legs were aching and so we decided to have a go at the foot and body massage! Yay! Sophie, Jonathan, WP, Steph, Addy & I went to get our much desired body massage. I got a male masseur while the rest got female, i was soooo scared he would break my bones or that i would get molested cause we were doing a full body massage and i was wearing my office skirt! But it went alright, he didn't break my bones nor did he try anything funny. In fact, i was laughing quite abit at the start cause i didn't know what to expect and it has been a long while since i did any massage at all.



I am a happy person after my massage!


4th day in Vietnam (3rd dec)

Guess where i went?!! No prizes for guessing. lolx.






Tiger DEN!!!! We went to the brewery, lolx. and it had this really cool pub in the brewery where the employees can chill out after a hard day at work, awesomeness.



Thien Kai, me, John & Yenni!! We were at the lecture room in the brewery, nice and cosy. Maybe that's why i fell asleep during the talk. lolx.

Look at the heineken bottles! I absolutely loved the display!


Look at the huge chambers behind us!

Me & John showing off our safety googles, haha.


CHEERS!! We got to enjoy free flow of tiger beer and snacks at the pub after the tour around the brewery. Cool right? haha. i kept eating all the yummy snacks and didn't really bother about the Q&A session that was going on. By the end of the trip, i was all flushed from drinking beer. i looked like a walking beet root. The worst part is that we went to the Vietnam university shortly after. my gosh. they must have thought that i was some drunk, hooligan student.



I thought the university exchange was one of the most interesting part of the trip as well. The Vietnamese were very hospitable and had prepared a whole lotta performances for us. I was very surprised by their openness and it was a very heart-warming experience. Though i must say that they seemed too over zeoulous at times. They never failed to mention their r/s status and always seemed to be trying to hook up some rich singaporean student(meaning us). it was kinda weird. especially this weirdo student who suddenly said," I like to play with myself. Any girl wanna join me to play, i will give you a good time!!" omg. my jaw literally dropped to the ground when i heard it. *shudders* me and mona looked at each other in utter disgust.





The girl in black is a Vietnamese student who's studying in an international school right now. She's very pretty and i think she's probably quite rich as well since she has a iphone, which i don't even have!


Then there's the awesome student cum part-time pub singer that we met that day! Van! The girl with the curly hair right beside me! I was like a dumbstruck fan in front of her, lolx, i was sooo excited to see her and we even arranged to go pubbing at night. she invited us to the pub that she sings at. gosh. her voive is the bomb. as powerful as kelly clarkson if i might say so myself.

And this is my cute Vietnamese guy! Owww! He's really cute and bubbly, lolx, i know it sounds wrong, like i'm describing a girl. haha. but his smile and joyous attitude is infectious! And when the group of us wanted to take a picture with him, he suddenly said "Wait! Wait! i wanna stand beside her(ahem, me)!" hahaha. i am totally gloating right now but at that point, i felt like i was flying into cloud nine. We took a picture together but i didn't use my own cam!! Arh! I hope the person who took didn't delete it from his cam!! i am sooo totally gonna slaughter the person who deletes it. not that i'll know who......

Acoustic Bar

Then that night,we finally visited a pub in Vietnam! Super nice! It's called acoustic bar and it's better than some bars in Singapore in fact.The audiences really get to be up close and personal with the musicians. I was very impressed by the fact that they invited some really old ladies to come up to sing. There was one lady who was probably in her 70s who went on stage and rocked down the house! It was incredibly cool. By that time, the whole group of us were pretty high and we decided to take up 1/4 of the place and dance like nobody's business. haha. even though it's a pub and normally, people don't dance in pubs. but we couldn't give a damn.

After the whole pubbing session, we were still high and the night definitely couldn't end there so me and steph invited everyone up to our room for an overnight partty!!

Our party session ended up as a full blown gossip cum stupid games session. haha. we played games like detective & hunter game, and all the other orientation games. and also this new game that i neve heard of until then, it's called "Chuck, Fuck, Marry" (sorry for the vulgarity but that's just the name of the game). basically, you hafta choose out of three names, who you would wana chuck, have sex with or marry. it was really interesting to hear the different opinions. we also played stupid games like "which body part of the opposite sex most attracts you". lolx. come to think of it, we were damn wu liao. steph will get credit for coming up with these games. hurhur. some of the forfeits of the games were 7wonders! See picture below, i got lee hui and priscilla to put their noses to addy's armpits! i am the devil, hurhur.

There's sooo many things i haven't blogged about but this is mainly the gist of my whole trip. oh, there was the very "shocking" incident about a $2 durian seed that me & Steph stupidly purchased. but i'm too tired of repeating the same ol' story, so i won't blog aboout it anymore. i was sooo sad to have left early, the rest went on to muine to visit the sand dunes and the gorgeous sunset over there while i had to return to boring singapore for boring interviews. :(