Day 9

We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel like every other day. After breakfast we rode the van over to Viet Capital Securities Company. This is a stock company in Viet Nam. This was by far our shortest site visit. We walked into the company and saw a big board with stock numbers flashing in green or red. We took our seats and waited for someone to come and give us a tour or something. Well today must have been a very busy day because our “tour” consisted of us getting taken behind a counter in two groups and given a 3-minute briefing on what the company is and explaining what the big board is saying. Basically what she told us was that it was a rather new company in Viet Nam because stock is rather new here. Someone asked about why some numbers are highlighted and it was because those are being changed at the time. So after each group was briefed, we were finished our site visit about an hour ahead of schedule. So collectively as a group we decided to go shopping at the Tax Center in downtown HCMC. This center had three floors. The bottom floor was all jewelry, the next floor was brand clothing, then merchant clothing, and the last floor was merchant souvenirs like wooden bowls, paintings, chopsticks, and other things of that natural.

We headed to the hotel for lunch before going to ASCENX Technologies for our second site visit. Now this site visit was much more in-depth and by the end of it, no one wanted to leave. The site visit started like any other normal visit. We went into the boardroom of the company and waited for the two heads of the company to be ready. Dr. Berman then briefed us on the man who would be given the presentation and how he had an amazing story about leaving Viet Nam and how he ended up in California. Tung T. Bach gave us a presentation on the company. The company deals with repairing technology when companies do not or cannot go through the manufacture for the repairs or upgrades to their technology. They are basically the side mechanics when Ford does not have the part or they will not upgrade the technology. After the presentation someone asked for him to go into detail about his story. When he was five, his uncle, a very smart naval captain for the South Vietnam navy, ask his family to leave the country with him because it was right before the South fell to the North. His grandfather said no because he wanted to stay with their grandmother who had recently passed away. The uncle was later captured and put in jail. During that time, Bach’s mother visited her brother many times in the jail. After about a year he escaped with two other men and proceeded to be in hiding for four more years before he was able to escape. When he did escape form Vietnam after years of perfect planning, he was able to take two people with him. He chose Bach’s aunt because she was a female with many opportunities to gain away from Vietnam and Bach because his mother was kind enough to visit the uncle in jail. They escaped successfully by boat and lived in a refugee camp until their application to live in America was granted.

After the presentation, we were asked to go to coffee with us because it was the Vietnamese way. We went to the ground floor of their building and all got drinks while they talked to us more about their business and story. They also recommended places for us to eat and to go at night. We finished up the coffee and said our goodbyes. Everyone agreed that ASCENX was his or her favorite company so far.

Because of the ASCENX recommendation, we went to this place named The Black Cat for dinner. They had the best burgers any of us have had in a while. It might have been because we haven’t had American food in over a week.