When we arrived in Saigon/HCMC, one of the first things our guide asked us was “Do you call it Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?”. Everyone replied Ho Chi Minh City as that’s what our Hanoi guide had called it. Our Saigon/HCMC guide laughed and said “See, you’ve been brainwashed by the North already”. He then explained that in the South (where Saigon is located), the people call the city Saigon. Our guide told us the communists in the North (Hanoi – where the capital of Vietnam is) renamed Saigon to be Ho Chi Minh City after their leader Ho Chi Minh, but in the South this was generally not accepted and everyone in the South continued to call the city Saigon. Therefore, as I continue through these next couple of days, I’ll just refer to the city as Saigon.

Our first morning in Saigon started with two plenary meetings, one with a company called 500 Startups and the second with Fulbright University Vietnam. 500 Startups is a Silicon Valley company that works with upcoming tech companies to provide mentorship and potential financing. We met with Eddie Thai who is a Partner at 500 Startups and works specifically in Vietnam/Asia. It was interesting to see how in some instances it was clear that companies were just copying what was being done in the US, but how in other situations there were large hurdles to adapt to for the Asian market that wasn’t needed for the US and how almost entirely different companies could be formed.

After Eddie was done presenting, we had Ted Osius present to us about Fulbright University Vietnam, a new university in Vietnam that is designed to be like a US university where students come and figure out what they want to do for careers once they arrive, instead of the traditional Vietnamese/Asian path which is to pick what you want to do in grade school and continuously work towards that path without necessarily being able to switch career paths if you decide you’re interested in something else. Mr. Osius brought up that Vietnamese students have incredibly high school test scores but that 80% of employers are unsatisfied with their college-level hires. This is explained by the culture making sure students are very good at memorizing information but not necessarily good at problem solving new problems or working in teams. Fulbright is trying to fix that. Mr. Osius also told us that Fulbright University was the first university in Vietnam to have student housing/dorms setup and how it took a long time to get the Vietnamese government to approve of this. As Mr. Osius said, “The government said ‘we don’t want students living together and gathering together because then they cause trouble’” to which Mr. Osius essentially responded “Yes, that’s the point”. As Vietnam is a communist country, it took a lot of work to make this dorm setup happen.

After our morning plenary meetings, we went to the Presidential Palace with our tour guide. He said this was essentially the White House of South Vietnam before the war. Our guide also told us that 20 years ago Saigon would have only had 4 million people living in it but now the city was up to 12 million. In addition, during the war (which the Vietnamese call the “American War”), 4 million Vietnamese tried to escape but only 1.5 million survived.

Additional pictures from the Presidential Palace:

After the Presidential Palace, we went to the War Remnants Museum. Parts of this tour were really tough to get through and Disclaimer: one of the pictures has the results of Agent Orange, a chemical that was used by the US during the Vietnam War that created serious health defects for anyone that was exposed to it.

Pictures from the War Remnants Museum:

After what turned into a pretty heavy afternoon, the class went back to the hotel to relax before dinner for the night. The class had decided to setup a last minute group dinner, but a few of us had already made plans for a Saigon scooter Vietnamese food tour. Essentially, everyone in our group was paired with a driver and we drove throughout the city of Saigon (they have Districts, i.e. District 1 and District 3, etc., just like Chicago has Lincoln Park and West Loop, etc.) on their scooters going to different areas and trying different foods there. Below is a picture of our drivers with their scooters behind them. Throughout the tour we went to:

• District 1: the heart of Saigon
• District 5/6 border: their Chinatown
• District 8: where people go to for hot pot with goat
• District 7: called “Little Singapore” – the power lines here are underground and the entire area is only 17 years old
• District 4: where we went for seafood

Pictures from our food tour:

When we were totally full from eating and done driving through the city, everyone decided to call it a night. Although the last day of our trip was tomorrow, we still had to wake up early for one more plenary meeting with Henry Nguyen, the licensee for all of the … drum roll please … McDonald’s in Vietnam. It was a really interesting meeting. Click here to see my last day in Vietnam and the whole trip.