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. :(

Flights Boarding Now

The group has started to make their way over to Vietnam. We are all traveling separately (or in small un-official groups of 2 or 3) over to Vietnam. In some ways this has made it more difficult for everyone to arrange their own plans, but at the same time, easier for some returning from places outside of Chicago during the holidays, or flying on their preferred airlines.

David (my roomate for a bulk of the trip) appears to be the first to reach the Asian continent, making a short stop in Beijing first before he arrives in Saigon just a few hours from now. Then he and a few others (including Milena, and Nneka and perhaps others?) are headed up to Da Nang, in the northern part of Vietnam, for a few days before the official start of the class. Northern Vietnam is a much different climate from the south (more rainy and cooler) and there are some cultural differences as well.

Niyati is spending some time in Shanghai, China over the weekend before joining us in Saigon. I think Birger is also spending some time in Hong Kong before arriving in Vietnam, but I am not sure when he is headed there.

Another large group (Steve, Michelle, both Marks, Kelly, Kyle, both Allisons, Ben, Angela, and Rob) have chosen to spend their New Year's eve up in the air, departing mid-day tomorrow, and toasting champagne on an airplane.

As for me, I'll be with the last group to leave, departing Chicago on Sunday morning assuming the whether chooses to cooperate. I just flew back to Chicago last night after visiting with my family in California over Christmas. I am getting very used to being in airports.

Some quick thoughts on what we are expecting for the trip

Theme discussion of social media project

Yesterday we had our first group meeting to figure out what the theme was going to be for our social media project(video and PowerPoint). We all had good ideas and thought about things we would like to do on the trip so we were using that to narrow down the theme possibilities.
For example, we will have to see if Kyle owns up to it, but he insinuated he would take the a snake-blood shot – just as we saw in the video. I will be there to snap a picture of his face as he does!
I already see Kelly as our blog master. She has a complete passion for social media and will keep us all in line.
As we move forward I will learn more about the others in the group and will keep people posted on how we progress.

If you guys have any suggestions for themes feel free to comment…

Video: 2nd Class Meeting Prior to Trip Dec 4, 2010

2nd class meting

Today we had our 2nd class meeting prior to the trip. Students from the class gave presentations on each of the three countries we are visiting. We learned about Dos and Don'ts that we should follow in each country as well as additional cultural and historical information on each county. Highlights from these presentations were:

• A proposal for reducing congestion and pollution in downtown Saigon
• An up-to-date report about the political turmoil in Thailand between the red-shirts and the yellow-shirts
• And a overview of the relative simplicity of starting a business in Cambodia from an outside investor's perspective.
  

A 4th group is working on an in-depth marketing study for Saigon Cosmetics in Vietnam and presented their research findings to date.

After class, many students consulted with each other on their post-trip plans. Everyone is looking forward to the trip.