Requirements to Live in Saigon

As we toured around Saigon (Ho Chi Min City - is far too long to type) today in our lumbering tour-bus, I noticed a few things. First - to get around this city, it is a requirement that you drive a scooter/motorcycle. Second, while driving your motorcycle, you probably will want to wear some sort of surgical mask or bandanna to cover your nose and mouth to prevent ingesting too much dirty air. Next you must ignore the fact that you wear the mask when you are riding your motorcycle to prevent ingesting the dirty air, and smoke as many cigarettes as possible, occasionally while wearing the mask and riding the motorcycle. If you have to go to the bathroom, no problem, you can stop pretty much anywhere and urinate on a tree or fence or wall or something, then get back on your morotcycle and speed away. Well, not really speed away, lumber away at a blistering pace of 40kmh - the standard speed limit which seems to be heavily enforced. Hungry? Stop by any one of a thousand places serving Pho, eat on the sidewalk, and leave your dish on the curb. Someone will pick it up eventually...

Communism Does Not Like Facebook

Life is full of surprises! This morning I learned that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam does not allow access to Facebook. Well, that's a game-changer in terms of our strategy for staying connected with friends, family, colleagues and the Loyola community back home. Rest assured, that's what backup plans are for, and fortunately we planned ahead.

While we are in Vietnam (through January 8th), we'll be updating pictures and posts from Twitter.com/MBAsGoneDong and this main site MBAsGoneDong.com. Regardless, you can use these sites to follow our adventures throughout all our trip (Jan 1-16, 2011). We had planned on leveraging Facebook in conjunction with other social bookmarks for ease of communication. Meantime, just follow us through MBAsGoneDong.com or Twitter, and we will let you know when our Facebook fan page/group is green-lighted for action.

Good Morning Vietnam

Jetlagged and awake @ 6:40am local time. Waking up after my first overnight in Vietnam.

A lot of friends back home asked me what it would be like to fly overseas and to cross the international dateline, while Chicago celebrated New Year's Eve. I am disappointed to say that United Airlines didn't say a peep to mark the stroke of Midnight anywhere in the world during our flight. Whereas other airlines flying to Saigon passed out beers and did a countdown over the intercom. No thanks to United Airlines -- I probably slept through the moment it became 2011.

After taking different outbound flights from Chicago, my roommate, Allison Perkins (she was on the "fun airline") and I met up in the lobby of the Bong Sen Hotel Saigon. We threw our bags down once inside our room, and immediately walked outside to explore the few block radius surrounding our hotel. A few necessities were on our minds ... picking up bottled water to brush our teeth and to have in the room, as well as, finding an ATM to convert American Dollars to the local currency (Dong). First things first though, we wandered into the Sheraton Saigon http://bit.ly/ZoWRP for a celebratory cocktail.

The lounge on the 23rd floor of the Sheraton featured a live band playing American music. If you're a people-watcher like me, then you would have loved the hilarity of witnessing an odd assortment of middle-aged white men with bad comb-over haircuts wearing 80's Wrangler jeans and grinding on the dance floor with young Asian ladies, while you are perched above sipping a champagne cocktail, toasting the start of 2011 and our arrival into Vietnam. I snapped a picture of the scene and was then told photography was not permitted. :(