May 12

For today, we had an early morning wake up to head to the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP). After an hour outside of the city, VSIP is one of the country's premier industrial parks and attracts companies from all around the world. In a presentation at their headquarters, we saw models of the park and heard about the past, present, and future projects of VSIP. Additionally, we had a presentation by David Baker, the chief engineer for II-VI in Vietnam. II-VI is a diversified manufacturing company based in Saxonburg, PA right outside of Pittsburgh, with significant factories in Vietnam based at VSIP. We learned about the company history, their unique product line, and their reasons for doing business in Vietnam. After the briefing, we were able to tour their factories and see how some of their high tech products were made. Most of the tour was over my head, but seeing the factory was still pretty cool to see. Leaving VSIP, we went to another great lunch at a restaurant nearby. Returning home after lunch, it was a good time to take catch up on some sleep for a few hours before going back out with our Vietnamese friends for the evening. We got some bahn mi, a very good Vietnamese sandwich, and then headed to a Vietnamese fast food restaurant for French fries and ice cream. After dinner we headed out as a group for the night to check out some local places recommended to us downtown and had a great time.