Tuesday, May 21

I rejoined my group in the afternoon to visit the Nam Viet Commercial Joint stock Bank. We received a brief presentation about the operations, and business system at NaviBank. We learned about the history of banking in Vietnam; the banking system is a new phenomenon in Vietnam. Many traditional Vietnamese hold their life savings in safes in their own hands, there has only been a recent shift to trusting a banking system to save and grow money. The presentation was in Vietnamese, and then translated into English by one of the students from UEF. It was extremely difficult to focus on the information about the bank because of the language barrier. When asking questions after the briefing, it seems we could not find a single answer that answered one of the questions we were asking because the questions were so altered by the time they traveled with some understanding through the language barrier. I was very surprising that a bank as large as Navi did not have a single English-Vietnamese speaker. With someone who was bilingual, I feel I would have learned much more and would have been able to get more out of the visit. Later for dinner, I ate at Bread and Butter in the backpacker district. It was my first time in the backpacker district; the bright lights and large number of bustling bars and restaurants really impressed me. I had a very good cheeseburger at Bread and Butter; I was very happy to enjoy American food with all the Vietnamese seafood I had been having. On a side note, I have grown more dissatisfied by second hand smoke. Wherever I may find myself, I am surrounded by thick tobacco smoke. I wasn’t really able to enjoy my cheeseburger; as good as it was the restaurant was still fogged in a thick cloud of cigarette fumes. This is also the case at the clubs; I constantly must step outside to find at least one gulp of fresh air.