Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Today we had three company visits. In the morning we went to the Saigon Newport Corporation, which is a company that provides a multitude of services from their shipyard. Some of these services include: terminal/yard/warehousing services, inland haulage & waterway transport tugboat services, construction and repairing, logistics services, and customs clearance services. SNP is owned and managed by the Vietnamese Navy. We took a tour of the shipyard and walked up to the control deck to get a view of the Cat Lai port. Afterwards, we went to UEF and relaxed in the Canteen for a few hours. We got iced coffee and lunch.

Next, we visited the Quang Trung Software City, which reminded me of VSIP. QTSC houses offices for a variety of software companies including TMA Solutions, CMC Telecom, Worldsoft, and Global Cybersoft. It also includes restaurants, housing, training facilities, and entertainment. QTSC has been operating for 11 years and is owned by the government. Some U.S. companies that are involved with QTSC are HP IT Vietnam, BTM Global Consulting, National Technology Solutions, and IBM Vietnam. We took a little tour of the software park, stopping in the FPT University that teaches IT.

We drove over to the TMA Solutions tower within QTSC after our meeting there. TMA Solutions is a software outsourcing company that provides research and development services and mobile solutions. TMA Solutions was founded in 1997 and now employs over 1,100 engineers. Some of its investors include: IBM, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Renesas, Foxcon, Fujitsu, Canon, and Panasonic. Some of its R&D outsourcing is from companies including IBM, Microsoft, Ericsson, Siemens, HP, and EA. Their largest clients are Siemens, Nortel, IBM, Oracle, and Ericsson. TMA Solutions has won the gold medal for software export 8 consecutive years (2004-2011).

Tonight, we got ice cream at a street vendor. We all got this ice cream that was vanilla with peanuts and this fruit on top that I don’t think we have in America. I don’t remember what it was called, but the flesh was clear and round with a black pit in the middle. Then, we went to get dinner at a Hot Pot. I don’t know if we have these in the U.S. either, but I know I’ve never been anywhere like it. We all sat down to a long table that had a conveyer belt carrying little plates of seafood, vegetables, and noodles through the middle. We all ordered the type of broth we wanted (I got Japanese), and then we heated the broth on little hot plates that were built into the table. We picked whichever toppings we wanted off the conveyer belt and put them into the broth to make our own soup. I think it might have been one of my favorite meals here so far.