Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Day 2. 9th March. Tuesday. Duy Tan University(DTU).

UP AND EARLY, RISE AND SHINE!

I don’t know how they do it here in the Nam but breakfast at 7am… is just way too early for us rough ‘N tough city slickers. The only thought keeping us going was the anticipation of their reputed Vietnamese coffee and a hot steaming bowl of Pho. We had a few hair raisers navigating through the endless torrent of students on their scooters (aka.. hellcyclles) before arriving at the canteen (located just down stairs behind an isolated alley).
Ordering food without knowing a single word of Vietnamese… definitely comical. I walked into the kitchen and played charad-tionary (combination of Charades and Pictionary) to get my morning fix. This much can be said… AMEN! to their adrenalin infused coffee. TONS OF WHOOOPASSS GOODNESSS packed in a tiny cup.
Fortunately, our liaison and Vice Dean of DTU, Mr Hoi An arrived in time before the group had to put up with another of my embarrassing performance to order food. We didn’t manage to get any Pho coz they ran out but we landed some eggs and bread. Total cost about 2 bucks. I can’t say its dirt cheap, but its cheaper then back home.

Breakfast

After the breakfast, we meet the president of Duy Tan University in the conference room. After a short welcome speech and a short exchange, we caught a video bestowing the virtues, successes and developments of Duy Tan university and its collaboration degrees and programs with foreign tertiary institutes. Fret not, Singapore Polytechnic were amongst those with special mention.
Perhaps they make one of these videos for each of its collaborative partners but we really wont know would we?

Mr Foo and The President

Meeting in the Conference Room

Our campus tour caught the eyes and attention of all the local students – granted they were definitely more interested in the girls in our group then in us as a whole. We visited the library, computer room, staff room and laboratories. The classrooms were mostly non air-conditioned, with neatly arranged wooden chairs and tables, and a very distinct worn down battered chalkboards. Their computer labs on the other hand were well equipped. Most likely a healthy portion of the budget is allocated to their software related degrees – the pride and joy of DTU. The library is a little a ways from what you would find in SG in terms of size and variety, but they had an adequate and sound collection of basics a university student would need.
The most impressive view to me was the car park located right smack in the centre of the school. Neatly arranged rows of scooters and bicycles filled the car park. In Vietnam, this is essential as almost every student owns his/her own pair of wheels to get to school. I was just awed in admiration by their display of mad skills.

Library

Computer Lab

Carpark

Staff Room

Laboratory

Lunch was at a small family run restaurant just around the corner from school - Our very first real local meal. As we ordered from a scrounged up menu with English translation, our waitress easily locked down our orders – Individual portions of chicken fried with lemon grass, egg fried rice, fried fish and my special order of fried mackerel. I was just beaming with joy when our waitress patted my back and exclaimed my excellent choice of the fried mackerel. I was just salivating in anticipation of fresh, well fried mackerel. Lightly salted, crispy skin, fragrant juicy meat, the aroma….. I was definitely on cloud 9 when the food came and I passed on the other plates of fried fish – unappetising fillets of fish with tomato sauce. Several plates were passed around, everyone else got their food except me and I figured… you know.. special fish.. special care.. more time taken. True enough it came just a little later and it looked exactly like everyone else’s. Special my ass. Everyone broke out laughing after realizing I just got stiffed by that smooth talking ego boosting waitress. Needless to say, it was a horrible $3SGD meal.
Like seriously… anticipation much?
After that eventful lunch, we headed to their mega mall, Big C (vinh Trung Plaza) in two 7 seater cabs to pick up some essentials like snacks (which Singaporean can survive without snacks?), drinks and toiletries.

The Mall

It is more or less similar to Bugis junction or Tampines Mall in Singapore. The girls were more fascinated with the beauty products and cloths there whereas the boys headed to the super market to stuff their cart with the necessary food items which are going to keep their stomach full for the following days. The supermarket was as big as the local Giant supermarkets in Singapore. Basically the Vietnam goods are reasonably cheap. For an example 2 Cartons of milk which came with a free glass bowl cost about 13,000 Dong (approx $1 ).However the imported goods such as the can chili Tuna can go up to $3 (46,000Dong).There were many varieties of things ranging from foods to cloths to electronic items. Name whatever household products you want and it will be there. The fruits and vegetables are very fresh comparing to what you see in the local markets in Singapore. The variety of breads and pastries were extremely appealing to our eyes. We just couldn’t resist the food temptation then. Done with our food shopping, we went to dine at “Lotteria” one of the fast food restaurants. It is similar to Mac’s cept it serves fish, shrimp, beef and chicken burgers. The ice creams there are similar to our McFlurrys. The price was more or else the same as the meals we get in our very own local fast food restaurants. I guess being a Singaporean; we somehow crave for fast foods no matter what. At about five we called for our cabs and we huddled like penguins as the cold front caught us by surprise. Caught unprepared and dressed for the hot sweltering sun we faced all day, f-fff-reeeez-zz-zzz-zi-ii-nn-gggg was the only words we muttered as the strong chilly winds beat down mercilessly on us.

Shivers