5 days, 5 senses

So apparently I have been too slow with updating my blog.  This might have to do with the fact that I have been busily exploring the city in order to have stuff to talk about on the blog.  I think it's a fair trade off to have fewer blog posts with more to talk about than blogging about sitting at my computer all day blogging.  Cut me some slack here.

Hold on there is a huge cockroach that I need to go kill.

Ok, I'm back.  It flew upstairs.  Hopefully it wont come back.  Also, it's a palmetto, not a cockroach.  Looks the same to me, but I will try to be culturally accepting and use the correct term from now on.  Wait, now I need to kill some ants that are trying to climb into my bed.  Ok.

HELLO WORLD!!!  Guess what?  I am on a wireless connection right now and just a few years ago this area, An Phu (District 2) used to be a jungle.  I was even able to check email on my ipod touch today when I was downtown.  I'm pretty impressed.  But the power does go out frequently, so again, don't expect blog updates every day.  It's better to be pleasantly surprised whenever one pops up.

As I alluded to earlier, Saigon is different in every sense that a sense can be down to my sixth sense that I will get a job sometime in the near future (future being broadly defined).  Since it was dark when I landed, the first sense I used was that of smell.  Although it took a little while to pinpoint what was wafting every which way, the air has a common scent of a campfire burning incense.  People keep fires going on the streets and in their houses for cooking and burning rubbish, and combine ritualistic or just plain just-because-it-smells-good incense.  They most certainly are not burning anything for the purpose of heating themselves, since it's so humid you might as well be in the river.  While that smell does encompass the whole city (or at least what I have seen so far), there are frequently some particularly gnarly (it's been a while since I used that word, but that's the best way to describe them) scents that completely override the bonfire of the incense.  These can particularly be found in the markets, but for the most part there is no place that is immune to pungency.  In this heat, with no dip in temperature ever to kill things off, bacteria and fungi and mold and whatever else that smells worse than stretch of Rt. 68 in Durham by Greenbacker Farm, keep growing and growing and stinking and stanking.  Winners in this category include the fish section of Benh Thanh market, many other sections of that market with unrecognizable potential food products piled high and wide, and numerous random patches of air in the streets.

When I was finally able to see the city, I immediately noticed two things- motorbikes and construction.  Although there are cars, trucks, busses, bicycles, and pedestrians, motorbikes run the show.  There are no traffic laws (that are enforced) and the xe om (zay ohm) drivers are in a constant race against time to create the quickest, although not necessarily straightest, route between point A and point B.  If traffic is stopped and the sidewalk is clear, then pedestrians watch out.  If taking a left means cutting across traffic and they see an opening, then oncoming traffic watch out, and if they do need to cross traffic, brace yourself.  I rode on one for the first time today, both in and out of the downtown area (District 1), and there is definitely a sense of fear weaving in and out of bikes and cars and over uneven surfaces and flash flooded streets.  I have already seen 3 accidents, but only one third resulted in death, and who knows- that guy could have moved right after I saw him motionless in a gutter.  Another was two bikes t-boning each other.  Whereas in the States, people would be screaming back and forth while exchanging mandatory insurance information, these people (and one of them was a Westerner) didn't exchange so much as a glance and pretty much bounced off the pavement back onto their respective bikes and off on their merry ways.  They didn't even brush themselves off until after they got back on the road.  Then again, this also could have been the realization that they were both stopped in the middle of an intersection, and they could go without getting run over.  Finally, there was one guy we came across that had just fallen over, and with him went his entire delivery of Coca-Cola bottles.  Nobody honked at him; he didn't seem upset; he just meticulously picked up all the bottles, picked up the bike, and moved on.  I'll probably buy a Coke tomorrow that will explode in my face.  This accident brings me to my favorite picture so far and transitions perfectly to the famous Vietnamese smile.

As I learned from reading Vietnam Today, Vietnam is proof that although popular quote-maker "Unknown" may say otherwise, a smile is not the same in every language.  The Vietnamese smile many times does have the same broad-happy-I'm nice-you're nice-even if I don't understand a single word you are saying- connotation, but it can also be used to mask anger or embarrassment or even garbarrassment (the popular new term which is a combination of garbage and embarrassment and is catching on like wildfire from Bangor to Bangalore and Nassau County to Dekalb County).  You will frequently see people nearly escaping accidents and smile in lieu of shouting obscene epithetical threats.  So, let's analyze this picture.  The guy in the foreground is smiling at me because he is happy and wants me to see that he doesn't need an orthodontist to have a high self-esteem.  On the other hand, although you can't see his face, the guy who is picking up his bottles and his bike is smiling because he knows that his riding skills are better than that and he is pissed off.  On a side note, I didn't even realize that happy smiling man was in the picture until after I looked at it.  Then I smiled an American-English smile because I knew that that picture was going to make the blog.

Anyways, I know I promised five senses, but unfortunately it is far later than I have been up yet and I have a full time job of exploring that I need to wake up for tomorrow.  I also don't want to overwhelm you, the reader/person who actually cares what I am doing or what I think, or myself, the writer who is extremely A.D.D. and has trouble staying on one topic for too long.  Thus I will leave this at to be continued.  As a note to myself, I still want to talk about my trip to the Nike Store (not the factory), my living quarters, animals, more about the people, some comparisons to South Africa, and a whole lot more.  Stay tuned and GOODNIGHT WORLD!!

I Have Arrived

I am in Ho Chi Minh City, but even the American pilot called it Saigon, so I guess that is what it will be from now on.  The flights didn't seem that bad, but there was a lot of them and a lot of moving around and getting delayed.  I flew from New York to San Francisco, then had a two-hour layover to board a flight to Hong Kong.  At less than 13 hours the flight was a lot shorter than I envisioned it to be.  For some reason I thought the Pacific took much longer to cross.  In Hong Kong, I had to get off the plane and go through security to reboard even though it was the same plane to Ho Chi Minh City.  Because of typhoons the past few days, flights were really backed up and a lot were cancelled.  Thankfully mine was only delayed about 2 hours, and I was even able to connect to the internet there.  Splendid.  

On that flight I opted to read this fascinating book on Vietnamese culture called Vietnam Today.  United Airlines only had one movie screen far away, but it was good in that it forced me to read this book that I really needed to read before I got here.  It talked a lot about having patience and gave many examples of the differences between Vietnam and Western culture.  After reading the book, when I was in Hong Kong, i saw a guy that had a sixth finger right next his thumb.  Now if you think this is crazy, when he turned his hand over, he has a swastika clear as day tattooed on his wrist.  The Germans standing next to me were gawking and whispering, but that could have just been about his unfortunate second pinky which, looking at the looking at the long fingernail could be very handy to him.  Anyhoo, I'm am not going to jump to any judgement, but it was just a shocking tattoo to see on a man that could not have been older than early to mid forties.

Other than that, and some slight confusion navigating the Hong Kong airport, there is nothing extraordinary to report.  Customs was a breeze (trying to steer away from using the term 'joke' although I just did there), and I could not have been more fortunate to have Brendan (my friend from home who is living here and whom I am staying with at first) pick me up at the airport.  I am sleeping in a nice alcove underneath his staircase, where I am going to attempt to fall asleep now, although it is mid afternoon for me.  

I can't believe I am actually here.  I have never been more excited (with a hint of nervousness) for anything in my life, and I can't wait to explore this city in the daylight.  It smells different, it feels different, and I am looking forward to be culturally shocked starting tomorrow.  This is going to be one hell of an adventure.  But don't worry, Dad, first things first is getting a job.

VIETNAM?!?! Why the hell would you go there? I spent many years trying to AVOID going there!

WHOA THERE BUDDY!  I have gotten this from many people in my parents' generation.  Why would I go to a country that most people in America only associate with the war, when I could go anywhere else?  Why not London, or even Hong Kong?  Why not New York or Boston?  Do I hate my country?  

Fair enough.  Theoretically, I could have gone anywhere in the world.  How did I narrow that down to Vietnam?  Let us take a step back.  

After graduating college last May, and after packing boxes and working a forklift in a factory in order to save up some money, I moved to Cape Town, South Africa for seven months.  I worked (interned for free) as a business analyst at Cape Venture Partners (CVP), a venture capital and consulting firm which pairs entrepreneurs with investors and is also in the process of raising its own fund.  Although I was tearing through my my money from graduation, the warehouse, and other life savings, this was an incredible learning experience that allowed me to have much more responsibility than I could have had anywhere else.  Most importantly, it was my first lengthy experience in a foreign market and it made me hungry for more.

At first I was set to move to London.  I had worked there for a short while before and thought it would be a great next place to go to work in international investing.  Two things/people helped changed my mind away from London and towards the East.  

One was a banker from London who gave me the clear view that everyone was getting fired and the only people staying on were 35 plus with years of specific experience.  He was surprised that I would want to leave my current position when I was in the process of raising a fund for an emerging market venture capital firm, and said that if I succeeded in that, it would greatly increase my job offers.  When I told him that I wasn't being paid, he was no longer surprised.  This shattered my hopes of going to London, but opened my eyes to the possibility of staying in South Africa or going to another emerging market.

The other was a private equity fund manager from Cape Town whom I met at the "unquote South Africa Private Equity Conference, which I attended representing CVP.  This guy sat down at the end of the night with me and my friend Alison and gave the most moving motivational speech I have ever heard.  Our conversation changed the thought of moving to another emerging market from idea to necessity.  His single biggest regret was not taking more risk when he was younger and that above anything, he would recommend that we do what he did not.  He said I should just plop down in a place like Lagos or Sao Paolo, much riskier in terms of markets (and personal safety) than London or New York, which are quickly being viewed as financial centers of the Old World.  Although my salary would be a small fraction of what I could get in the developed world, the experience would pay off exponentially in the future.  

Now I decided that I would be willing to go anywhere.  However, as much as I enjoyed South Africa, I wanted to try a new place and get a fresh start.  Although Brazil always lingered in the back of my mind, I decided that Asia was the place.  I have never been there and it is clearly going to be the leader of this century, particularly with China and India at the head of the pack.  So I started with these two.  As I looked at some of the more frontier markets though, Vietnam came up over and over.  For a while I was leaning towards Mumbai or Bangalore, India, but after a less-than-confident talk with a hedge fund manager who invests only in India, all signs pointed to Vietnam being the right place.  He told me that the Indian culture and business practices rely mainly on inter-Indian trust and that because of that he would never hire an ex-pat for his ground operation in India.  This confirmed my prior belief that it would be tough to break into these huge markets which already had a billion qualified people each, and finally gave me the excuse I needed to narrow in on Vietnam.  

I didn't give up on India yet, since there are many more venture capital companies in India compared to the nearly non-existent market in Vietnam, and I also wasn't going to let one person on the pessimistic side of the spectrum rain on my parade.  However, I thought back to the risk-taking advice from the South African guy, and decided that now would be the best time to explore a frontier market that is in the process of building its financial sector right now.  Vietnam is one of the fastest growing markets in Asia and the World and it is thus showing a lot of potential to foreign investors.  Unfortunately at the same time that I decided to go, the country is experiencing its biggest financial crisis of recent times.  But I am going for experience and adventure, and the best time to experience these emerging markets is to go during a crisis.  

Everyone who I have talked to who has been to Vietnam (post-war) has fallen in love with it.  It is a beautiful country which is apparently quite friendly to Americans, despite what most would think.  This is mainly because 28% of the population is under 14 and 30% is between 15 and 30, and thus has no memory of the "American War" as it is referred to there.  This young population is extraordinarily resilient and entrepreneurial and strives for the success seen in the developed world.  Because its financial sector is in its infancy, there is much more of a need for outside talent than in China, India or Brazil.  This, coupled with the ease of getting a work permit, was enough to convince me.  The decision took a few months after returning to the US, but I finally realized that if I wanted to ever go, now's the time.  Otherwise, it would never happen.  It is the biggest decision of my life, but I am confident it is the right one.

I booked a one-way ticket from New York to Ho Chi Minh City on August 22nd.

Oh, and I don't have a job yet.  More on that to come...

In Case You Don't Know....

I am moving to Vietnam on August 22nd.  I have learned from past trips that I am notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people, so I thought I would set up this blog to let you know what I am doing and that I am still alive and kicking.  I can't make any promises as to how often I will update it, but I will do my best, so keep checking back.

This, however, is not a trip.  I am going with the intent to get a full time job in private equity, venture capital, or asset management, and I have no idea how long I will be there.  I only have a 3-month single-entry visa as of right now, but I got a one-way ticket, so time will tell.  

I love visitors.