We began day four with a lecture on Mekong Delta. We discussed the history of settlement in the delta, the geolgy and ecology of the region, as well as the current events that are disrupting life in the region. It will be interesting to see how what we learned in lecture and our predeparture readings will relate to our visit the the Mekong Delta this weekend.
Lunch consisted of the famous Vietnamese dish Pho, which was absolutely delicious!
For our company tour, we visited Glass Egg Digital Media, a company that focuses on outsourced designs for video games. Because this is a very niche and competitive field, the company had to overcome many difficulties. The CFO talked about how it took many years to raise capital to get the company off the ground and more years to even make a profit. Another difficulty comes from their specialization in designing cars. Clients sometimes pass over them because they only believe that they can design cars, not knowing the company can differentiate and is capable of producing other quality design work.
Glass Egg is currently in a comfortable spot with a respected brand and portfolio. It’s location in Vietnam is beneficial due to its low cost of labor, in comparison to Japan and China and does not see the need for international expansion. Currently it is expanding past it’s niche of cars and designing game environments. The management team expressed that all of the new hires will be in this field.
Thats all for today, looking forward to a relaxing beach day at Vung Tau tomorrow!