Travelogues - Day 2, Saigon, Vietnam

So day 2 was reserved for 'Floating Market' of Can Tho. Like I mentioned earlier, we were waiting in Saigon for Anna to catch up with us. Alot of travel blogs had mentioned Can Tho, some said you must visit it and others bashed it. We had time on our hands!

Now, for those of you who read this and are planning to goto Vietnam (and since that's never gonna happen i'll add a third condition, those of you who have three legs), I personally would recommend going to Can Tho but get there the previous night and stay in that town for the night. Get up by 5 AM the next day and take a boat / tour out to see the real floating market in action... not just remnants which we saw at 11 AM. But inspite of that the boat ride through the villages was pretty quaint. I had a great time and was thrilled coz Can Tho had loads of 'Love Apple' trees... my favourite fruit... i plucked a couple of huge ass ones and munched the juicy fruit on the way back.. it was awesome.. coz it was reallllllllllllllly hot... we went in March.... and i had these huge juicy love apples to munch on! heavenly!

It's usually advisable to go to this place with a tour operator... your best bet is Sinh Cafe... the cheapest rates and the most widely networked tour operator... they have a lil restaurant where they take you for a crappy song and dance performance (too shrill and slow for my liking) and free lunch (well no such thing as a free lunch.. but still... free lunch). Also at this place there is a crocodile pond in which you can pay 15000 dong (i think) to feed the crocs... personally i think its really cruel coz invariably people tease the crocs... and i think its wrong to tease anybody with food... also there is one croc who's super lazy... just lay there with its mouth open for the longest time.. i was there for about 20 minutes.. thru;out the 20 minutes, the croc had its mouth open!!!

Don't buy stuff from the stores there.. .unless you're doing it to boost local trade... if you want a good bargain... goto Hanoi!

So that's it for Mekong Delta floating market... by the way.. my friend Ashish din't like it at all!

Travelogues - Day 0

I forgot to mention in my earlier post that the 4 of us were travelling to Vietnam and Cambodia (originally Laos too, altho' I've boycotted Laos now) after completing our Term 3 at the Asian Institute of Management. After our trip we were all headed back home (India) for our internships... so obviously we had a lotta luggage to take back.. now this is the crappiest thing for budget travellers... so we had to pay a lil extra for more allowance on Tiger Airways and it wasn't so bad... but instead of going straight to Ho Chi Minh City, we had to goto Singapore to drop off our luggage at our friend's cousin's place! Phew!

One crazy trip!

Travelogues-Saigon, Vietnam - Day 1

Get ready for a volley of posts since I've been MIA once again... but this time I've been upto interesting stuff...

Three of my classmates and me backpacked thru Vietnam and Cambodia and I really recommend both those places to people... at least Vietnam if not Cambodia!

We started our trip in HoChiMinh City where we immediately set off to go to the Cu Chi tunnels... this is the network of guerilla tunnels built by the Vietnamese to kick the U.S.'s ass big time... they're so freakishly tiny and go on for kilometers together in a labrynthine manner... my god.. its crazy the kind of things adversity forces you to come up with and face day in and day out... those tunnels are so bloody tiny that to enter one of them, the Vietnamese soldier has to jump in with his/her hands straight above their heads and wriggle in and then crawl along in a rodent and roach infested area!!!! And just think if one soldier suddenly panicked... everybody'd be stuck....i went into one of the ahem 'enlarged for Caucasians' tunnels and still was a bit freaked out!

But more than what I saw I was over-awed by the feeling of what transpired along those very same steps I had taken in Saigon 40-50 years ago... the number of wars that have ravaged our planet are just so many and I don't think they'll ever stop! Sometimes wars are faught coz people don't have their basic roti-kapda-makan (food, clothing,shelter) but there have also been times when its a sport! And that's when I wonder if all the people in the world have their basic needs met, will inhuman atrocities stop? Sadly the answer is naught! I guess its just human nature... we need something to kick us in the ass, or frighten us to make us feel alive... to make us feel!

Anyway coming back to Saigon... the place is so well organized for travellers... as soon as you get off at the airport you can either catch a cab or get onto a bus which takes you to De Tham which is the backpackers area... and that area is sooooooooo alive... to compare it to another alive pulsating place... I'd say it was like Malate in the Philippines... Malate which is home to my favourite bar in the world.. Penguin...

So at De Tham or one of the streets off it, there are tons of hotels to stay at... I loved this placed called Xinh that we stayed at for about 5$ a night, with AC, hot water and free internet and the hotel guy, Wen, was really sweet as well... he told us about how he visited Cambodia every year at a particular time to meet his best friend and that its a really nice place...

Anyway.. shopping wise Saigons pretty nice but Hanoi is better... there's not much to do in Saigon except chill, go see the Cu Chi tunnels on motorbike (is most fun) and go stay the night on the Mekong Delta to go out at 5 AM to catch the floating market!

I've realized (at least for myself) that more than the places publicized by tour guides and agencies, its the experience of getting there and the journey which is sometimes much better than the place itself!

Cambodia in my next post

Mumbai Indians getting sponsored for 2-3 mn USD

So even in times of recession you can find and net that elusive advertiser! Mumbai Indians have almost confirmed that Idea Cellular will be investing between $ 2-3 million in the team. This is great news because even though Mumbai Indians had a dismal performance in last years IPL, they seem to be able to attract marketing spend. Like I've mentioned in earlier posts theres just wayyyyyyy tooo many similar if not same messages hitting consumers. Everybody is trying to differentiate himself in this crazy croweded market. Sports offers this opportunity. Now to get an ROI on such an investment letsee if Idea can ideate well enough to get fans to become consumers. Even tho India is a cricket crazy nation, that level of passion may not translate into marketing success. If Idea can manage that through a pure ROI number it would boost investment in sports (hopefully not just cricket) and this in turn will better sporting infrastructure and play calibre.

Corporate sponsored sports training camps

I was reading a management thesis written by the proponent of the company we're working with for the Google Online Marketing Challenge on Sports Consultancy in the Philippines and I realized that humans are more of 'feelers' than 'thinkers'. For instance we do things because we usually 'feel' like doing them and not because its a well-thought out plan. What does this have to do with sport... well... I think that this is precisely the reason we like sports so much. Watching sports tournament is an emotionally charged activity. It's probably one of the few things that keeps you completely occupied while you watch or play.

Every participant in society has something to gain from sports. With an increase in spectators, the sport itself gets attention, better players, more money ---primarily making it even more emotionally charged. Players play better with a more enthusiastic audience... everybody loves putting on a show. And with fantastic players and crowds going crazy corporates won't be too far behind. In fact I think corporates benefit alot from encouraging sports. If they organize training camps for whichever sport they feel is in sync with the company, they get loyalty from consumers both potential and existing and also increase the market size for their products. To give you an example, if Dettol sponsors a sporting event, obviously consumption of their product / consumer will increase coz obviously the players get dirty. Now why Dettol... coz Dettol cares enough to organize training camps ... so the sportsperson who's benefiting will most likely buy Dettol.

In fact I feel sporting goods companies should have a company policy to conduct training camps, and not just for mainstream popular sports. This strategy in itself will give them direction for product innovation which is something every manufacturer lavishly spends on.

Philippines Baseball

Philippines Baseball is the Philippines Baseball League equivalent of the MLB. You can get information about the league, players, merchandise et al here. The main focus of the website currently is to give people info-access. The management also has interactive features which can make the site more exciting!

GOMCHA - Google Online Mktng Challenge!

I took up a really interesting elective this sem - Online Marketing. Its an AdWords based contest being run by Google worldwide and thru this elective, students are participating in it. So obviously it becomes a live project I can show that I've been working on and more than that, its in a really hot field - digitial marketing!

So what is this whole adwords concept?

Almost every company has a website today. To market the website they can bid for certain keywords which when typed in google show a landing page of that website in the search. Depending on the number of people who visit the website through the keyword search, the company's adword account gets debited by the bid amount*no of individual users.

I think its a great marketing platform and since its in the nascent stage today, expertise acquired to a marketeer would be a humongous boost.

My interest in sports made me choose a sports site for this project - Philippines Baseball. What excites and frightens me is that even though it's online marketing, my team has to study the business model and the market for target customers Philippines Baseball subject to parameters of internet usage! That's like a whole business strategy definition, analysis and recomendation! Very overwhelming at this point of time... but I'm also looking forward to it.