iPhones in Saigon

I'm the owner of a spanking new iPhone. Gotta love a market economy! (Thanks for the tip, Kevin.)


If you're in Ho Chi Minh City and looking for an iPhone that will work with the local carriers, drop by Tin Tuc Dien Thoi at 683 Tien Thanh in Quan 10. They have hardware unlocked phones, including TurboSIM hacks. The scary thing about TurboSIM is that they have to slice off the corner of your SIM card. Ok, maybe this is a drawback to the prepaid plans. I believe that if you hose your SIM you loose your funds.

They claim that they may be able to fix my poor dropped iPhone in the meantime. I'm going to drop it off and see what they can do. If they can fix it, the wife will have a nice new toy as well.

Open Coffee Saigon (6pm next week)

We had a great meeting today. Thanks to everyone who attended. We ended up with six folks, five entrepreneurs and one investor.

Mainly the discussion was around interesting startups and how to start a company here in Vietnam. We debated the benefit of options make when hiring Vietnamese workers. We discussed office space styles and universally lamented the lack of bandwidth here in Vietnam. Hey, that gives me an idea for a startup. :-)

Almost everyone hated the time, except me and Pho. We'll try 6pm next week so the late night hackers can wake up at a reasonable hour.

I've created an Upcoming event for this. If you want to add yourself to the guest list, you can find it here. You don't need to sign up but it would be nice to know if we're going to have a big crowd so I can get there early and stake out some space.


Details:

Highlands Cafe, Saigon Centre
6pm November 15th, 2007

Schoolbus for One

This is how we get to school in Vietnam!

My Vietnamese language teacher calls my helmet a rice cooker (nồi nấu cơm). Most folks don't wear helmets in Vietnam. The thinking is that they cause accidents because they reduce your field of vision and impair your hearing. Given that most signaling is done with a horn and the top speed is 20 mph, there may be some truth to that.

BTW, the brand of bike is a SYM. I've never heard of them before but they seem to be pretty popular in Vietnam.