Summer Session II was a very unique experience for 14 adventurous Wake Forest students. Though they spent the first two weeks of the session on campus doing course work like the rest of the summer school participants, the last three weeks of their program consisted of a service-learning trip with their professors and the professor’s families to Vietnam. Learning Entrepreneurship in the Vietnamese Context from Professor Betsy Gatewood and Comparative Political Science from Professor Peter Siavellis, the students got the bulk of their lecturing and reading done while on campus the first two weeks. During this time, they also heard from speakers like the founder of the nonprofit “Children of Vietnam,” Ben Wilson, and from a former Wake Forest graduate Jennifer Woodsmall Lawson, who, after her own trip to Vietnam, started a social enterprise line of handcrafted accessories. While abroad, students were instructed to observe and research project topics that were due upon their return. Students were able to see first hand the effects of communism on business, economics and, most importantly, the every day lives of locals.

 The trip started with a marathon travel day across the world to Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam. The first few days in the country were spent touring around this large city and getting acclimated. For some it took quite the adjustment before they were comfortable eating meals with chopsticks, brushing their teeth with bottled water and crossing the busy, moped-filled Vietnamese streets without looking both ways.

 In Ho Chi Minh City highlights of the tour included climbing through the Cu Chi tunnels, gaining some perspective in the Vietnam War Remnants Museum, visiting the native religion’s Cao Dai temple and meeting with members of the U.S. consulate in Vietnam.

 After the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City, the group found themselves in a much different environment, a rural village in the Mekong River valley. Though they stayed in a hotel that was in the slightly larger beach city of Rach Gia, each day the group traveled an hour by bus and boat into the rural Vietnamese heartland for a community service project refurbishing Tan Phoc Elementary School. For five days the group bonded with the locals by working, eating and playing with the children. By the end of the week, the school was repainted, the windows were replaced, the desks were refinished and the schoolyard was newly cemented. Junior Austin Lastowka commented on his time in the village saying, “The service work portion was easily my favorite part of the trip. It allowed for us to form a pretty intimate bond with the country and its people, and it also brought everyone in the program closer together. Not only did we build a school, but we built personal connections!”

 Following the weeklong service portion, the group traveled all up and down Vietnam visiting many of its budding tourist locations. They enjoyed the beach at Phu Quoc Island, walked the candlelit streets of Hoi Ann during a full moon festival, toured the ancient city of Hue, spent the night on cruise ship in Halong Bay, saw a traditional water puppet show in Hanoi and toured the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Throughout all of this exotic excitement, the group stayed grounded by remembering the relationships and genuine Vietnamese lives they had experienced off of the tour bus trail.  Junior Joe Wright comments that though he loved the more luxurious parts of the trip, “having the opportunity to see the real heart and soul of the country and culture, far from the flashy lights and congestion of the cities, is what made the experience unique.”

 Another student, senior Kyle Brides, who’s father fought in the Vietnam War enjoyed observing life as it could be seen from the tour bus window. Though nearly every home now glows with the light of a television in the evenings, Kyle noted that, “in many ways the Vietnamese countryside still looks like the video and pictures you would see of it during the 60s.”

 While this may be true for the development and homes in the countryside, economically lots of change has occurred. Since the Doi Moi Reform of 1986, Vietnam has moved closer to a market economy, and its economic growth rates have soared.  Both opportunity and necessity-based entrepreneurship are booming as the group observed on the buzzing city streets. Wright notes, “I was really surprised by the amount of entrepreneurial activity in Vietnam. For a country that is still referred to as communist the number of small, family owned businesses and the size and scope of the various markets we went to seemed to be no different from other places I have been in the past.”