Day 3

Today waking up was rough, but the Vietnamese buffet was as usual a relief having sunny side eggs. I was also adventurous and tried the salted duck egg and the name certainly was not off. It was beyond salty but surprisingly tasty. The first site visit we were headed to was the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park J.V. Co. Ltd. This park was roughly forty-five minutes to an hour away taking us through the narrow mangled streets.

Once we arrived we were introduced to the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park by Vu Quang Vinh their Marketing Manager. He described overall the company’s job owning land and renting their factories to a wide variety of products. They manufactured candies, car parts, various gears, and pharmaceutical goods. Within Industrial Park the leases for each factory is nationally 50 years long. The benefits of having your product manufactured in VISP is they will export it to all locations and even have their own internationally approved inspection site on hand.

After this presentation they served us a phenomnial part 2 of breakfast. This varied from flan, tuna bruschetta, Hawaiian pizza, strawberry short cake and authentic Vietnamese Coffee. Next John Nguyen, Director of II-VI presented. II-VI is a Pittsburgh based business that is producing Optical Lenses and Thermal chips for car warmers, refrigerators and anything requiring thermal readings. John left Vietnam 4 days before the unification of the north and south. Afterwards he worked at a full service gas station and paid for his education, he eventually married moved to Allentown. There he traveled to Pittsburgh created II-VI and returned to Vietnam to help production.

We next were sent on a tour of II-VI’s Industrial Park Plant. There they showed both the optical lens and the thermal chips they produce. The group split into two as we both looked at the different production lines. First we saw the Thermal chips production for all types of thermal reading areas. To create these chips they took aluminum rods, then through multiple steps of electrolysis, they plate them with gold. Next we saw the optical lens factory. As the glass slowly becomes more optically precise the factory rooms require less light disturbance and dust. To accomplish this II-VI separates workers with concealing different rooms and having darker paint to reduce ambient lighting. Finally to help II-VI to create lens with almost no optical reflection, 98 percent, they use a laser beam to remove any infractions.

After the tour they told us of some business issues they have been dealing with working in Vietnam. Since VISP houses many companies the competition for workers is a constant struggle. For the optical lens factory it takes about 6 months of training for certain positions. Since the turnover rate in Vietnam is about 18 percent at the end of each year, losing valuably trained workers has been a continual problem for II-VI. To counter this they have remained paying at the 75^th pay scale and providing bonuses.

After this site visit we went to a restaurant ‘Monaca’. There I tried the Vietnamese pancake that is a deep friend omlet with seafood inside. It was an interesting taste, similar to that of a potato chip, with very different textures.

The restaurant was located directly next to Glass Egg Digital media, our last stop of the day. At Glass Egg they help create video graphics for games produced internationally. They are well known for their Car Graphics but have been trying to work past that stereotype by creating backgrounds and eventually creating their own online video game. Unfortunately this presentation was probably the least favored as neither Phil Tran, CEO, and Steve Reid, CFO, presented. The presenter seemed to be in a rush or rather didn’t care to elaborate on any of our Q and A.

Once we finished with Glass Egg we returned and everyone passed out having jet lag catch up to them. I was however woken up with previously set plans to go out with Tony to try out some Vietnamese dishes. Since most of the crew was sleeping it was three of us that left to eat out at ‘Hai Anh’. There we had the Vietnamese version of Spaghetti and liver, yet again delicious with odd textures. It was an awesome time as the majority of Tony’s friends attending UEF speak relatively good English and is always interesting interacting with them. Following dinner we went to the Diamond Center Plaza for ‘Ca Phe’. Located on the sidewalk we sat on playhouse size chairs among the masses of Vietnamese drinking coffee and socializing. Today was a great day despite the rough start. I am thoroughly looking forward to hanging out with Tony on Friday and immersing myself in the Vietnamese culture.