Vietnam: Day 9

Tuesday morning brought us back to UEF for a Vietnamese history class, followed by our Vietnamese language class.  We continued to review what we have been learning over the past week or so and started to learn a little more about the different accents and pronunciations, some of which can be very tricky for foreigners (the tonal language of the Vietnamese is difficult to master, especially for Americans).  We also learned how to say stuff like “Sunday I went to Vung Tau” or “Today I am going to Bến Thành Market”.  Vietnamese is interesting and different from many other languages in the sense that verbs never need to be conjugated (for example, it would be “Sunday I go to Vung Tau”; there’s no different word for the different tenses, it only depends on context).

After class and lunch at UEF, we had about an hour to kill before heading over to e.town for our visit to Glass Egg Digital Media.  Since e.town is closer to UEF than it is to our hotel, we just relaxed in the air conditioned classroom for a while before getting on the bus.

At Glass Egg, we met with the CEO and CFO, Phil Tran and Steve Reid.  They took us on a short tour of their facility, on which we were able to see the company in action.  There were many employees hard at work designing different cars and other game-oriented artistic 3D computer models (such as buildings and characters).  Glass Egg is interesting in that instead of taking “computer whizzes” and teaching them how to use their talents to create good-looking models, they hire artists (that have to pass an initial test to begin with) and put them through a 6 month training program to teach them how to convert their artistic abilities to computerised 3D modelling.  For one person to design one car to be used in a video game (take Forza 3 for example), it takes an average of 32 days from start to finish with an in-game level of detail.

The cool elevators in the e.town building

The view from the conference room in Glass Egg Digital Media

Phil and Steve are also part owners of the night club Lush that we had gone to on Saturday night.  They told us that tonight was ladies night at Lush and that if we were to go, that we would be treated well.

When we got back from Glass Egg, Austin and I went down to Bến Thành Market to walk and shop around a bit.  We were there for about an hour or so before being too overwhelmed and hot to stay any longer, at which point we flagged down a cab to go back to the hotel.  Using only our limited knowledge of Vietnamese, we were able to communicate with the driver to take us to the Victory Hotel on Vo Van Tan street (he didn’t speak any English, as some drivers do).  It felt great to be able to converse with someone in their own language without having to rely on them knowing ours.

After changing and putting our purchases in our hotel room, we headed out to dinner.  We went to a place called Barbeque Garden, only a short walk from the hotel.  It kind of reminded me of Hibachi, for you ordered your food (mostly different types of skewers; I had spicy chicken) and they brought it out raw.  There were two little circular grill things, one built into the centre of each table, on which you cooked your own food.  It was really good once you figured out a good routine to cooking (such as how often to flip, where the best spots on the grill, how long to cook for).

The grill and skewers at Barbeque Garden

Following dinner, we came back to the hotel to freshen up and change into our classy clothes for Lush.  Just as Steve Reid had said, we arrived and were treated like VIP’s.  We got a reserved table in the upper level overlooking the area in which we had stayed on Saturday.  James, another one of the part owners, sat and talked to some of us for a decent amount of time, as if we were important clients or regulars.  It was a sick night, probably one of my favourite nights of the trip thus far.

Lush!