SaigonNezumi.com

Last Friday was the official Grand Opening Party at the Hard Rock Cafe Ho Chi Minh City.   Last month was the soft opening.

Leon Sikes, the Managing Partner at MNG Joint Venture Partnership, and I were given invites by the Viet Thai International Joint Stock Company, or VTI for short.  For those of you that do not know, VTI is the owner of Highlands Coffee, and the master investor for Hard Rock Cafe HCM.  MNG, which focuses on global commerce and trade, intends to distribute Highland products in Turkey with hopes in expanding to the Central Eurasian region.

Since Leon and I did not have our invitation passes, Derick from VTI walked us in.  Once inside, I forgot I was even in Vietnam.  They did an amazing job with the interior of this Hard Rock Cafe.  Since it was the grand opening, the drinks and appetizers were free.

Hard Rock Cafe HCM was a bit packed since there were actually two parties, the 6 PM and the 9 PM (for VIPs).  At 9 PM, the early group just stayed, I would not have left either.  Run-DMC was the star of the grand opening.  If you did not get an invite, you really missed a great party.

Hard Rock Cafe HCM is definitely the place to go to hang out, have a drink and listen to good much in Saigon.  Actually, I would say it beats all the other clubs in Saigon now.

Photos and 1 video below.  Sorry, I used my G1 Google Phone so the picture quality is a bit lacking.

(Hard Rock Cafe HCM from the front of the Intercontinental Hotel)

(Entrace of Hard Rock Cafe HCM)

(First band playing)

(Run-DMC playing)

I have been quite busy the last month developing with Wordpress.  Oddly enough, I had about 6 requests for Wordpress sites from friend and colleagues during this time.  Wordpress has come a long ways and with the large number of developers and designers behind it, Wordpress is becoming the permier web content management system.  It is perfect for small to medium company websites at the moment.

During this time, I decided to play with some of the features Wordpress themes and plugins are now providing to users.  When one of my clients needed to manage their photos, I found NextGen, a great photo gallery plugin.  I loved it so much, I decided to use if for myself.

Essentially I have 3 websites with pictures of my trips around the world since 1997.  I decided to aggregate them into one photo blog using the free Arras Theme.  Presto, Qeeboa is born.  Qeeboa is derived from the word, keyboard, invented by one of my students almost 2 years ago.  Since I already registered the domain name, I decided to use it for my new photo blog.

Some of you will notice that I use the name Kentai Matsunaga on the site.  Matsunaga is my family name from my Japanese mother’s side.  Kentai was my Kazakh name that I went by for two years (1997-1999).  In Kazakh, it is deprived from a word small since many Kazakhs felt I was, well, small.  It also have meaning in Japanese as well.  Ken means sword, tai means body.  I will explain later why I will plan to use Kentai Matsunaga in the future.

In the meantime, view some of the photos of the various cities I visited since 1997.  I plan to put most of my pictures there.

http://www.qeeboa.com

This is just one of those things where you just have to be there.  In the wild, this rhino should be charging me.  Here, it seems to want my help though most likely, it wanted some food.  The other rhino would not let it eat.

This rhino had a huge cut near it’s right eye with flies flying around it.  I wish there was a way to rescue or protect these animals at the Dai Nam Safari Park.

I added a video with the elephants as well.

Today I went to the Dai Nam Safari Park outside of Thu Dau Mot, Vietnam.  The park itself is not bad for a one day excursion away from Saigon.  We visited the pagoda lined entirely of gold and visited a another pagoda on top of the man made hill.  It would have been a fun-filled day if we had not walked into the zoo.

For me, every time I visit a zoo, I measure it with my favorite zoo in my hometown of Seattle, the Woodland Park Zoo.   Until today, the worst zoo I ever visited was in Thailand.  What I saw at the zoo at Dai Nam Safari Park shocked me.  Cramped conditions, untreated cuts, poor water conditions, etc.  Each enclosure had inadequate running room for the animals.  The sea otter exhibit shocked me since I am used to the enclosures given to the otters at the Seattle Aquarium.   Just take a look at the photos below:

(Small area for 4-5 osteriches)

(Another Small Inclosure – A)

(Another Small Inclosure – B)

(Sea Otters swimming in warm uncleaned water)

(Small areas for the rhinos)

(This rhino was very unhealthy with an untreated cut near it’s eye)

(This elephant looked sick)

(This elephant’s trunk had a puncture wound you can see through)

(These buffalo looked sick)

In general, the majority of the animals were not active.  My friend said they looked quite old, their fur was not shiny due to stress.  Only the tigers and lions seemed content.  After visiting the elephants, we decided to leave the zoo and finally the whole park in general.

It is appalling that animals could be treated in such way.

Turkish Airlines is another one of my favorite airlines.   I flew with them several times since 1999.  I would choose Turkish Airlines in a heart beat if they started offering flights straight to Saigon.  Turkish hospitality is one of the best in the world.  Here are some good Turkish Airlines commercials:

Here is one of my favorite videos promoting tourism to Istanbul: