Day 3: About rain, more rain, delicious phở bò and who in Vietnam needs Starbucks?

Day 3:
About rain, more rain, delicious phở bò and who in Vietnam needs Starbucks?

Well, what can I say about today. It was raining like there is no tomorrow. Someone here once told me that they sometimes drive to work by motorbike in the morning, and in the evening when they want to get home... well, they have to swim. I thought he was joking but I know better after today. Even though the statement might have been a little exaggerated, if the rain is as strong as it was today, it won't drain off the streets if it continues for a long time.  For me, however, the rainy weather was a good excuse to really catch up with some studying. Therefore I spent the whole morning after breakfast to get together the discounted cashflow model from corporate finance (thank you Mr. Kustner).

Fried egg with a super tasty baguette
and iced coffee

By the way, breakfast today was a full success as I got my long desired baguette with eggs! As I spent my morning with some cashflow calculations I do not want to bother you with that too much. The people of my class from Switzerland will have to deal with it in the near future anyway.

During a short break I had an interesting conversation where the waiter from the hotel restaurant showed me some pictures of traditional Vietnamese clothes and told me that the next King Kong movie which will be published in 2017 was filmed on some Islands in Vietnam. 

He also told me that last year there was actually snow in Hà Nội (north of Vietnam). 

Furthermore he answered my question from yesterday whether the food from the north is generally less spicy than in the south. Turns out it is not the case as it can get quite cold in the north and the people are then eating even spicier than here in the south.

Phở bò

At lunchtime I decided to get some  Phở bò which is a traditional Vietnamese dish. It is a noodle soup with beef and some bean sprouts and other delicious herbs. The woman also served me some kind of pastry with it. I did not know what exactly to do with it as the soup was very delicious already. So I just bit some off and thought it was a little tasteless. She passed by my table two times and was shaking her head. At the third time I guess she couldn't take it anymore and came to me and broke the pastry into small pieces and put them into my soup and was talking something really fast in Vietnamese. I guess it could have been something like: " I don't know how you can eat that just like this... Isn't it obvious that this stuff needs to go into the soup?". But I'll probably never know. In the end I have to agree that it tasted mutch better within the soup than on its own and was a perfect fit. 

As it was still raining after my lunch I decided to find a nice coffee place where I could also do some studying. In Switzerland it would be obvious that you'd go to Starbucks if you need wifi, a proper table and a nice atmosphere (those of you who know me also know that I don't like Starbucks but I have to admit that there are little options in Switzerland if you want these criterias to be met). Well this is most certainly not the case in Vietnam and I could probably write a whole blog on itself about the Vietnamese coffee culture. I'll give you some facts first before I go into my personal thoughts.  

First of all, Vietnam is the second largest café exporter in the world as you can see in the graph below. 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/268135/ranking-of-coffee-exporting-countries/ 

It's actually pretty surprising that not more Vietnamese coffee is consumed in Switzerland but I assume this could be due to the fact that the coffee is usually consumed cold here. I am very sure, however, that it would not lose any of its deliciousness if it was consumed hot. 

Anyway, the Vietnamese coffee is of an outstanding quality (even though you can actually chose which quality you want to have). Some of the finest qualities sell for as much as USD 500 per kilogram in London and New York.
(http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/business/74625/starbucks-revenues-in-vietnam-exceed-target.html).

I guess with these information you get the point. Now, back to my thoughts. Vietnamese coffee is the best I have ever tasted in my life and I have been to quite some places mentioned in the above  graph or have at least had some coffee from those countries. But it is not only the taste of the coffee which makes it so special. It is the whole culture around it. Ho-Chi-Minh City (and also other places throughout Vietnam) are crowded with coffee shops. Within the city you could get a coffee every 50 metres. These places almost always provide a good wifi (which is by the way available almost everywhere for free     even in the smallest soup restaurants where they have only two or three tables), very friendly staff, and a cosy environment which no Starbucks I've ever been was able to provide. If you order a cà phê sữa đá you will get an iced coffee with condensed milk which gives the coffee a very sweet taste. If you are more of a "I don't like sugar" person you can also order it black (have a look at the breakfast picture) or if you ask for, in any other form that Starbucks would also serve you. Furthermore, you will always get served some tea (without sugar) to satisfy your thirst. 

As you might have already guessed I am not a big fan of Starbucks. I was wondering whether Starbucks has really tried to get a foot into the Vietnamese market. And guess what... Of course they did which is not surprising when we take a look at their mission statement: 

"Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time." 

http://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/mission-statement 

I don't want to go into details about Starbucks and the sense of this statement which basically implies that Starbucks is for everyone who can hold a cup, lives in a neigborhood and has a human spirit. And  I am well aware that after this blog I will most probably never get to work for Starbucks. It is not meant as an offense to Mr. Schultz (CEO of Starbucks) whom I actually highly respect for his enterpreneurial spirit.  

Gcoffee in Ho-Chi-Minh City. One out of thousands of charming
coffee shops... and 3 Starbucks in this City

What I really want to say is, that a country with such a rich offering of different coffee qualities (a medium quality coffee costs around CHF 2.-) where you can enjoy your coffee at so many places in a really nice atmosphere does not really need another coffee chain. For me it seems a little bit like an American Fondue chain
( e.g. https://www.meltingpot.com) trying to push into the Swiss market which would of course be kind of cute. But just cute and not really to be taken serious... 

Okay... Now I REALLY stop with the whole coffee situation. Sorry this got out of hand a little bit but at least some of you know very well that coffee is a serious and emotional topic:) 

I'd like to close today's post by saying that if you are a coffee lover and want to taste different coffees around the world, Vietnam should defenitely be on your to-visit list. 

And I am sorry for the different font types and sizes but it turns out that blogspot is not as user friendly as one would expect it to be...

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!

Day 1: About ruthless airplane neighbors, an amazing welcome to Ho-Chi-Minh City and a different visit at the hairdresser

Day 1:
About ruthless airplane neighbors, an amazing welcome to Ho-Chi-Minh City and a different visit at the hairdresser

This blog is for everybody who is interested in my experience during my stay in Vietnam and will not solely focus on business aspects but will inform you about my experiences during my time here. I try to not make it too boring for those who read it. 

I left Zurich yesterday (October 27, 2016) around lunchtime and was facing an 11 hour flight to Hong Kong from where I would go on to Ho-Chi-Minh City. I was hoping to get some sleep during the flight as I had a terrible cold when I left Zurich. This plan, however, turned out to be impossible if you have 3 guys in the back who are travelling on holiday and ordered the first beers before the plane even took off. So I was forced to listen to their  conversations which were pretty much intellectually undemanding but it was nevertheless impossible to not listen what these guys thought to know about Asian culture from their previous holidays in Koh Pangan, Bangkok, and some other rather touristy places in Asia. After half an hour of listening to their stereotype views about the Asian culture ("Asians are like..." "In Asia you always have to..." "The beer in Asia is..." and so on...)  I decided to watch some movies. In the end I watched 4 movies and did not get any sleep at all. This is why I am pretty tired right now but entirely up to date about the current cinema program. 

My second flight from Hong Kong to Ho-Chi-Minh City was much better and I could at least close my eyes for some time. At the Airport I was picked up by Christoph who is actually not my shadowing host but is also a manager of a development team at Axon Active Vietnam. It was incredibly nice to leave the airport and breath the hot and different air of Ho-Chi-Minh City. Christoph walked me to my hotel and invited me to have lunch with him, his co-manager and the whole team. It was an amazingly warm welcome from the whole team and we had a very good soup! After lunch they headed back to the office after we had some delicious iced coffee. I will go deeper into the organization of Axon Active and the different people at a later point when my shadowing experience actually starts (which is on Monday). 

My first order of business was clear even before my trip started. Get a haircut! So this is exactly what I did. I searched for a hairdresser and found the "Hairsalon JENNY PHAM". I entered and immediately got placed next to the front door. To actually get to work, however, took the friendly guy quite some time as he first finished his food which didn't bother me at all as I was not in a hurry. I also thought a well fed hairdresser is probably better than a hungry one. While I sat there and browsed throught the latest Vietnamese fashion magazines (which are basically the same as in Switzerland just with more Asian people in it) I observed the housecat of the salon and the fish bowls which were placed at every place.

My hair before the haircut (and please consider, after 15 hours of travelling) and the charming fishbowl:)

It turned out that the waiting time was worth it as I got a pretty neat haircut. I have to admit that I was quite confused when he started off with the electric shaver as this is in Switzerland usually the last step during my haircut visits. But then he took the scissors and in the end I even got my hair washed and I am highly satisfied with the result and would recommend the hairdresser at any time. 

Right now I am sitting in a nice rooftop café, having my third iced coffee today and writing this blog. My top priority for today is not to fall asleep before the evening in order to not give the jetlag any chance!

Another nice experience of today was to cross the street. Sounds like easy as pie but this might just be the case in Switzerland where crosswalks actually mean something to the traffic participants. In Vietnam you'd just start to walk onto the street at a constant pace and never get the idea to stop or start to walk faster as the traffic is navigating around you which would be quite difficult for the people if you suddenly stop or move much faster. In my opinion, the safest way to cross a street or to participate in the traffic respectively, would be to drive a motorbike yourself and just go with the flow.  But for today walking works just fine for me.

So that would be it for now. To conclude my first day I can say that I love this place right from the start. It's busy, it's hot, the people are incredibly friendly and helpful and the streets are filled with motorbikes. What could you want more!?
Hope you enjoyed reading my first experiences right out of Ho-Chi-Minh City, Vietnam!