Day 2: About breakfast, an ordinary bus ride to the city center and the real world merger of Amazon and Zalando

Day 2:
About breakfast, an ordinary bus ride to the city center and the real world merger of Amazon and Zalando

I slept almost 10 hours last night and right now it seems that I have already successful fighted the jetlag. My cold is also much better than yesterday which might be due to the spicy dinner and to the warm weather conditions. Let's hope it will stay this way. After a comatose sleep I got up and had some breakfast. Unfortunately the hotel ran out of "real bread" so I had to eat toast which was also fine. But in Vietnam, you can actually get delicious crunchy baked baguettes which was introduced by the French during colonial times. The "banh mi" is a typical French baguette and you can buy it in form of a sandwich or just as a normal bread. I hope I'll get one tomorrow. 

My hotel; or more accurately, the hotel I live in :) 

After that, I decided to study some statistics (no joke) which was tougher than I thought it would be :). Afterwards I went together with Christoph and Nathalie, the two POs (product owners / team managers) I already had lunch with yesterday, into the city center to the Ben Thanh Market. The bus drive was actually not as adventurous as I had expected. Interesting, however, was to see that the bus driver had a plant on the bus dashboard. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of his plant. I was just wondering whether he always drives the same bus or if he actually moves the plant every day to a different bus and how the whole watering process is done...

Entry to the Ben Thanh market from across the street

The Ben Thanh Market is the central market in Saigon and it is crowded with both, tourists and locals. You can find almost everything there. From shoes, bags, scarfs, trousers, any other clothes to food of all sorts and an incredibly big coffee and tea assortment, as well as household tools and electronics of all sorts. The diversity of products is sheer endless and so is the motivation of the vendors at each booth to convince you that you won't find a better product at any other booth at a better price. I never got so much personalised advertisement as today. I personally was the chosen one to receive a special discount on various products fom various venders all through the market. Indeed, Amazone, Zalando and Co. could learn something from these people when it comes to personalised advertisement, variety of goods and dynamic pricing.

Of course, as a student my attentiveness almost automatically increases if I hear words like "discount" or "special offer" so I was walking through the market, trying not to stop at every booth and get involved with the vendors tempting offers. As it is not my first time in Asia, I already know that one always has to bargain.

Inside the Ben Thanh market

Need some coffee to study?

Need some shoes?

Got some nuts?

How about a new vacuum cleaner?

I guess you get the idea :)

I personally just wanted to buy some scarfs which I finally did after some bargaining. Actually, I was able to bargain the price for 4 silk scarfs from 1.8 mio. VND (Vietnamese Dong) to 800'000 VND . At this point, you should be aware that one (1) CHF is worth about 22'500 VND. I was pretty sure I made a good bargain. When I looked at the vendors smiling face after we closed the deal, I'm quite sure she would have had also agreed that it was a good bargain:) In the end I guess, we both left the market satisfied this day. Nathalie told me afterwards, that I should have showed her my student card to get even more discount which actually would have been an awesome idea. Maybe I get the chance to visit a market again and to get back to this input.

bún chả hà nội

In the evening we had some "Bun cha Ha Noi" which is a dish from the north of Vietnam. It is basically a sweet soup with different meat which is cooked on the bbq and then added to the soup. You can also add the rice noodles and some different herbs as you like. It was very delicious and it is less spicy than the food from southern Vietnam (I am not quite sure if that's generally the case).

I finished another very interesting day with this perfect dinner, nice conversations, some good beer and by writing this blog. Tomorrow I will probably spend quite some time to catch up with some studying and to prepare for the official start of my shadowing experience and a little more serious blog writing.

Beer is always served with ice which
 is very refreshing at the temparatureshere. Be aware that "Tiger" is not
a Vietnamese beer!