A day to remember in a private High school in Vietnam

We had such an incredible experience and fantastic day at our clients High school today.
From understanding the challenges the High school is facing until singing in the classroom – it was just a day you will never forget.

One thing everybody I am sure will remember about Vietnam after visiting is the smile of Vietnamese people on their faces. And that is exactly what happened today as well in the classroom. The students were so welcoming. They clapped when we came into the classroom. They were curious to understand from which countries we are and what we are doing in Vietnam.
The students were singing different traditional songs for us and then they decided they would like to hear a German Christmas song. Well and here I was – singing in front of 40 Highschool students in Vietnam “Oh Tannenbaum”!!!
We got a very good understanding today from our client that there are many implications on their business by changing government regulations which they didn’t foresee or maybe also couldn’t. Even by running a private school the client is still obliged to follow the government decisions, for example increasing salaries for teachers.
The private schools are hit very hard as they haven’t planed these costs in their budgets and are overspending quiet significantly. Hope we find a way to help them in the next weeks with this and also to recruit more students in the future.

The school is very well equipped – the classrooms have huge windows, the school itself is very clean. They have a doctor’s room, language & physics laboratory, Computer room, canteen, parking space for the motorcycles for the teachers and the bicycles from the students. The location is all you can really wish for: It is directly beside the sea with a view over Halong Bay – just gorgeous.

We met the Headmaster of the school, the Vice-president, 2 English teachers, the History teacher & the Computer teacher.
Before we left the Computer teacher was singing just for us a song about a Vietnamese hero during the American War. The title was “I will always be with you even on a very long road”. What an incredible performance.
The Vietnamese people are definitely very passionate and talented singers and I think they can even compete with the Irish.
Then we had one more surprise. The headmaster itself Mr. Huy also sang for us.

We got such an incredible hospitality in that High school. Teachers and students were so open and happy that we took time out to visit them and listen to us. What an experience!
This will be a day I will never forget!
Thank you Vietnam & the incredible passionate, driven, creative & welcoming Vietnamese people.

Impressive Orphanage visit on Saturday

We were all so much looking forward to our Orphanage visit, as there went a lot of email backwards/forwards between the IBM Vietnam team and the Vietnam Team 6 to make this happen. And it did! We visited a local Orphanage close to Halong City with 120 kids. Some kids are disabled, have hearing and speaking problems or HIV. Kids were between 0 -18 years old. The centre itself exists since 17 years and is run with a lot of love and detail. It really comes across that people are care who work there and the kids seem to be as happy as they can be under these circumstances. The kids were very excited to see us and spend some time with us. The Vietnam Team 6 tried to learn how to use our hands to communicate with some kids who are deaf or dumb. The kids had also a real interest in our camera's and to see themselves in the pictures we have taken. Some kids even took some pictures with our camera's then and they had such a big smile on their face. It does not take much to make them happy. That was soo nice to see. We had a great time with the kids and they with us!
We also bought some milk powder for the babies & a lot of fruits for the kids.

A visit to remember for Vietnam Team 6. And we promised to go back and get some pictures printed for the kids!

More pictures from the Hike to Yen Tu

Hiking to the top of Yen Tu

Five of our team (John, Juliana, Jan, Subbu & myself) decided to go for hiking on Sunday to Yen Tu - a very famous temple up on the top of a mountain (1068m). That was some experience we will never forget ;)

Image the following: Start hiking at 9.40am in 32 degrees or more in Vietnam.....and if you would have seen the steps we had to climb.....it just did not end....after an almost 4h hike we finally reached the top and we all made it. Unbelievable hike! But great and challenging. During the hike we had some different experiences with the local Vietnamese - young & old are hiking up the mountain to bring some presents to the temple. If you reach the top that means you will have luck in your life.....and you cannot imagine that even 80 years and older women are hiking up that mountain. That is impressive. Also all the workers who are carrying these heavy cement bags up to almost the top to built another temple on the way....I felt really sorry for all these vietnamese people. That cannot be fun and I am sure they all have sore shoulders!

Well, we will see about our sore legs tomorrow for sure! That trip was at least as challenging as hiking in the Bavarian mountain back home!

Very interesting last 2 days

Pictures with our translators when we went out for lunch in a small place (looked more like a garage) and we had a really delicious noodle soup! And see how they are cooking it :)

We finally met the client on Wednesday in his office after having a lovely tennis match with him.

They have rented a 5 story building in the middle of Halong City and from the balcony from the 5th floor they can look on their building site.

The director is very proud of to be the first business man in the Quang Nigh province to built a 15 story building with supermarkets, shops, office space and private apartments. And this is our client :) So they need financial advise on this. This task is definetly going to be challenging but we are 3 from our team and we look forward to it.

The first meetings were very impressive - first time ever I worked with a translator! But they are so nice our students. We can learn a lot from them and they from us.

My translator Lan asked me yesterday if I could help her to create her own blog. So we did that this afternoon and you should all have seen her face. She was so proud to have an own blog!!!

So we can not only help our clients, also the translators.

Another surprising day

When all previous CSC participants told me the most important skill to have when you go on the Assignment is flexibility I did not really understand why they highlighted it so much.
After my 2nd day with clients I know why ;)
Today I was supposed to meet with Johns client, a Primary school, after my client did postpone my Assignment for 2 weeks. After waiting for 2 hours in the hotel and talking to our translators with 10 calls to the Principal of the school without any answer we finally found out that the customer will pull out. So there we were - no client for John and mine is postponed.
But we have Thu Trang in our Team of 10 which had a very demanding client and we decided to (after listening to her yesterday) search for material for her and showed the translaters how to blog etc. The Thu Trang spoke with her client to tell him that we would be 3 people to help him and he was delighted as he has so many ideas he would like to discuss with us.
So the Director from this company invited us spontaneously to a Tennis match tonight, even when we did not meet him beforehand. That says something about how to do Business in Vietnam :)
So we had an impressive experience tonight on the court with a lot of Vietnamese bank directors and our client.
But the best thing happened over dinner afterward. When we all cheered with our glasses the woman had to sit down and the director and John (from our team) had to cheer again and empty the glass in one go. That happened a few times this evening and showed how important the ranking/hierarchy in Vietnam still is. ONLY men were allowed to do that on the table ;)
Oh I actually forgot to mention how the day started:
John, Jan & myself met at 6.30am and had a nice run on the seafront. It was already very humid and warm, but it was so great to exercise a bit. Afterwards we had a swim in the pool and then were ready for breakfast and to meet the clients. Can life be better?
Picture: John & our client at the tennis match

Dinner on Sunday night with our translators in Halong Bay

It was very exciting meeting our clients this morning. They really appreciated as we welcomed them with the Vietnamese "Sin Chao" which means welcome.
We had a great atmosphere by meeting with them and the translators. My client, an Asian-stock trading company, can only start the project in 2 weeks time as the Director has to go on an important business trip to the US with the Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam. He is very passionate about our help, but he said openly that he does not trust his employees to work with me for the first 2 weeks until he is back. But he just came up from Hanoi to meet me today and that was really nice to hear.
So I will join John with his project first of all with a Primary school 10km outside from Halong Bay. I am looking forward to meet the client tomorrow.
Great impressions for the first day and I am sure more to come

Vietnam Team 6 with the Vietnam Country General Manager in Hanoi Saturday night

An amazing weekend already in Hanoi

I feel like I have been here for a week already so much has happened and so many exciting things we have seen.
35 degrees and really high humidity :) so we are all sweating a lot, even the people from India who are actually used to the temperature.
I met the first people from the team on Friday night and it felt so good to met in person. Thu Trang from our team who is Vietnamese brought me out for a shopping trip on Saturday with her cousins and daughter and that was a great experience to shop with the Vietnamese from Hanoi.
The food I was eating the last 2 days was absolutely amazing. So much variety and with every 2nd bite you don't know anyway what you are eating really ;)
I even eat seafood and everybody who knows me well can tell that I am not a seafood person, but the shrimps were amazing.
So today we were brought to Halong Bay where we met our translators and that was a very interesting experience.
Tomorrow we will have our Kick off meeting with the clients and I am really looking forward to it.
We have a nice team of 10 people and we already had a lot of fun :)
I will blog more soon - just wanted to say hi. Hope you are all well back home.

Just another 6 days to go! Then the adventure is going to start :) can't wait...and that's where I am soon going to be - Halong Bay!