Temples, Glass Eggs, and Chris-Kebabs

            Today was an interesting day. I woke up feeling terribly sick, but I made it through the day. In the morning, we went to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, a Taoist temple. Despite being the hottest day so far, the temple itself was a very interesting experience. The detail put into the carvings was incredible. I saw a bunch of native Vietnamese praying and lighting incense.

Front view of the Pagoda

Kitty!

Inside the temple. There was incense galore and

it was super hot, but very interesting.

            After the temple, we had Vietnamese culture class where we learned about the geography and history of Vietnam. That was interesting because it was like a typical history class on Vietnam in America, but I got to see the other side of the story.

            Once class was finished, we went over to the cantina to have lunch. Since I wasn’t feeling well, I didn’t eat a whole lot, so it was rather uneventful. We finished lunch and went back to the hotel to change and then headed off to the Glass Egg company visit.

When you can't help but melt

into Snowball's warm embrace.

            Glass Egg is, by far, my favorite company visit yet. It had a very Google-esque vibe. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take picture of the work floor because of Glass Egg’s NDA with their clients. While we were there, however, we got to see the artists working on many projects including cars and characters. For those of you that play video games, Glass Egg is one of the largest outsourcing companies for video games and they specialize in cars and environments. They have created all of the cars in the Need for Speed series as well as over half of all of the Forza games.

A list of the clients that Glass Egg works for.

Games that Glass Egg has helped create.

            After the Glass Egg visit, we headed back to the hotel where some of the guys got measured for tailored suits. I slept right through that. Oops. In fairness, I felt MUCH better after my 3-hour nap. We then went out to dinner at the Barbecue Garden, which was very different from the other restaurants around. We ordered our food, but it was raw. That seems like a bad deal until I add that there were grills on the tables and we got to cook our shish kebab-ed food.  Now that I think about it though, the restaurant kind of runs along the same lines as a self-checkout in a grocery store. I think I should’ve been paid for doing their job for them. They were like, “Come to our restaurant! We will give you food and make you cook it and then you will pay us!” Seems fishy to me, but hey, that’s Vietnam.

My, initially, uncooked pork kebab.

I think I have a future in shrimp kebab-ing.