Apparently there is a strong “food” theme in my posts. Let’s continue that, shall we?

I had walked past Fanny’s Ice Cream Parlour almost every day on my way to work in Saigon and had always managed to engage my willpower to continue walking past its doors. Price was also a factor – it labels itself as “gourmet ice cream” and prices it as such. If I needed my fix, I’d cheap out and go get a delicious Black Forest Cornetto for $0.75 instead.

Jen and I were in Hanoi, lamenting on the fact that we were back in the traffic and noise of the city after weeks of relative quiet and solitude. We had spent a few hours walking through the French Quarter, where I had hoped to find a giant block of cheese to gorge on. Turns out the French Quarter isn’t as French as I thought it would be and we were headed back to the Old Quarter empty-handed when we passed a Fanny’s Parlour. I noticed a sign outside that announced a relatively new promotion: on the first Friday on each month they do an “all-you-can-eat” ice cream buffet for $4.  ”What day is it?” I demanded of Jen. “Friday” was her reply. “WHAT’S THE DATE?” I shouted, my voice betraying the excitement I felt. “The fifth”, she said, as the realization dawned in her eyes.

Oh, happy day. We decided to forego dinner and consume as much ice cream as humanly possible. It was glorious. It’s actually a really social event, frequented mostly by young Vietnamese folks. Everyone mills about the room, glass dish or cone in hand and chats, giving it the atmosphere of a bar. They have over 30 flavours including chocolate chili, banana and young rice, as well all the regular classics.

In the end, Jen ate 21 scoops of ice cream and claimed that she was close to vomiting. The competitive streak in me came out, bringing my total to 21 scoops plus a scoop in a cone for the walk home. Oh yeah, plus the crepes and the fruit dipped in the chocolate fountain. It caused the tummy to hurt but made us so, so happy.

I promised in last week’s post, Top Ten Packing Surprises, that I’d break down my dream gear bag for everyone this week. Well, despite having been widely criticized for my comment about American condoms, I have decided to be upstanding about my promises: my complete travel kit, in a handy, checkbox form.

Brian's bag was full of beer. What about mine?

Not just any beer. IceHouse.

If you see any glaring omissions (that don’t fall under the Obvious category, like a passport), then leave them for me in comments, or email me your own Complete Pack breakdown.

Please note that the following does not endorse unauthorized prescription medication use…always check with your physician first!

But with that being said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the beauty of the Asian pharmacy. It depends on the country, but at most shops (which can be found EVERYWHERE), you can purchase many things that you cannot get at home without a prescription and for a fraction of the price. Sometimes you need to make up a bit of a story, but they just don’t have the same type of rules and regulations that many Western countries have.

For example: a recent trip to the pharmacy in Saigon yielded me a year’s worth of birth control ($3 per pack, same brand as I normally use), 100 generic Tylenol 3′s with codeine ($6), 3 months worth of malarial medication ($6), and 20 Zyrtecs ($0.50). Makes you realize how much we are getting gouged at home.

When I got to Vietnam I KNEW that I had to get to Halong Bay. Words cannot even begin to describe Halong Bay, it is by far one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. There are HUNDREDS of limestones karsts in all sorts of shapes and sizes in the bay. We were really lucky as this is normally a super busy tourist spot and there are normally a shit ton of boats in the bay but it’s low season now so it was virtually deserted.

Halong Bay is an absolute MUST to anyone visiting Vietnam.

(Version française plus bas)

The Vietnamese are really outgoing and I have found it easy to make local friends. Up until recently, “23/9 park” on Pham Ngu Lao boulevard had been my main channel for making friends.

I met Yen at the aerobics class that takes place in the park everyday at 6.00pm. We connected right away and since then, she has introduced me to many of her friends. I also met Nhan- the one who took me to Ky Quang orphanage- at the park when she and other Vietnamese students asked me to practise English with them. I ended up sitting there for three hours answering their questions about France, the US, Vietnam, politics and cinema. Then Nhan introduced me to her own friends.

Making friends: Anh and Yen

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This week is the first in a series of behind the scenes posts we’ll be doing about what it takes to start, run, and grow a startup.

A classic Jet Set Zero brainstorming session.

Today we’re delving into the foundation of every startup – the idea.  Every company no matter how big, expansive or powerful was at one point a simple shiny dream.  Polishing what is in many ways the seed that your organization will grow from can made a tremendous amount of difference in every stage of development.  In addition getting your idea down pat helps with what is the hardest stage of development, the jump from idea to company.

In some ways coming up with an idea is the easiest part of the whole process (an umbrella that conveniently doubles as a shirt for easy storage, a moon-based bar that only serves micro brewed beer, a car that is powered by hope) however coming up with an idea that you (and other people) can take risks for, sell to other people as legitimate, and eventually make into a successful venture is actually much harder.  There is no science to divining this idea, but a good rule of thumb is that ideas in a field or area you’re more familiar with than other people are ones you’re more likely to have a natural advantage in.  If you’re a software engineer and have an idea for a world changing pizza, I would be more cautious about pursing it than say, the next killer app.

After you’ve found that idea through your choice method of inspiration (reading, research, working your job, drugs, group discussion, vision quests, sensory depravation, fasting, etc) there is a simple three step process you should work through to make sure you’ve got a winner.

Passion

The first step in the process is simple.  Ask yourself “How passionate am I about this idea?”  If you hesitate for even a moment or respond with anything other than “THE WORLD WILL BURN TO ASH AND GLASS BEFORE I LET THIS IDEA FAIL” then its time to return to the idea picking part of the process. Think about all the crazy things you’ve done to  make a meeting on time, or get a date with some girl (or guy) you thought was amazing, or close a deal.  Now think about doing something harder, all the time, without any limit on how long its going to last.  Boy, whatever you’re working for sure must be awesome, right?  That’s the point here.  Discarding the fractional percentage of startups that are so lucky their founders would have had their pockets stuffed full of winning scratchers by the wind had they not entered into their industry of choice and you’re left with a simple reality.  A startup is hard, brutal, and is made up of hard work, incremental progress, long days, long nights, debt, fear, anxiety and hard work.  If all this sounds grim, its because it is.  If successful companies where easy to build then no one would have a boss and world would quickly run of out champagne, gold, and A380s.  To summarize, see the second sentence of this section.

Realism

Step two, realism.  If you’ve made this far with your idea then congratulations! You’re clearly insane.  Assuming you are a functional member of society then this is an insanity that you’ll need to take on and run a startup, if you’re not then I’m just glad my address isn’t published on this blog.  Honestly it takes a literal mad man to take on the seemingly insurmountable odds of a startup, however sometimes crazy is exactly what you need to get things done.

The point of this second step is to take a look past your passion and see how your idea fits in with the rest of the world.  Simply put, is there any possible way you could make this work?  If you need factories in both South America and Asia, probably not.  If Microsoft, Google, and/or Apple already sell some form of your product, probably not.  If you’ve never met someone that has ever needed what you’re trying to create, then once again, probably not.  Realism isn’t about shying away from challenges, its about understanding the limitations of physical reality.  We started a production company without a shred of experience, but at this point I feel as though it did more good than harm.  We learned a lot of lessons the hard way, but we still thought through the process end-to-end and made sure we never hit a point where the path forward included clearly impossible steps.  There is no simple formula for this step, its just a matter of balancing your insane zeal with common sense.  My best advice here is to get someone smarter than you that you trust to give you honest feedback and get them to challenge you on the idea. If you can’t come up with a solution to the problems of production, management, distribution, etc that they propose then maybe its time to take a step back from the idea.  There is a difference between overcoming your fear of skydiving and overcoming your fear of skydiving sans parachute.  People may call you insane for both acts, but only one actually has a chance of success.

Refinement

So, somehow you’ve made it this far.  You have an idea that you are not only passionate about, but you can defend as well. Congratulations again! You are two thirds of the way to the starting line of a nearly endless race somewhere between you and everyone for 3 generations is running.  The next step is to pour over your idea and find a way to refine it down to the key element that makes is so worthy of attention and resources.  Work on your elevator pitch.  The more clearly and succinctly that you can convey not only the value of your idea but the factors that allow you to succeed in its execution, the better off you are. As soon as you can win over friends and strangers alike with your confident and well constructed pitch(without simply making things up) then you’re on to a whole new phase of the startup.

We’re only just scratching the surface of what this whole process entails, but hopefully you have a better idea of how this step works.  Come back next week as we talk about the all important business plan and why most of what you’ve been told about it is totally wrong.

No, this post is not about Jen. Though I’ve seen more of Jen sans pantalons than I’d like to admit.

Chances are, when you visit a traditional Vietnamese village, you will encounter the adorable, dirty, pantless village children on your journey. I used to have a tradition of sending my mom a postcard of such a scene, which I knew always made her inevitably cringe as she gazed upon their dust-smeared smiles. While in Sapa, we were not let down. Perhaps most importantly of all, I was very happy to find that they didn’t once approach us asking for money or candy but simply waved, grinned and yelled “HALLO!”

I’m glad to see the no-pants-dance is still going strong in Asian villages.

We’ve posted about eating dog before. We went to a local restaurant in Saigon a couple months back that specializes in dog meat (or “doggie” as they call it here). Serene ate it by accident that night and was pretty upset. I tried it at a dinner party and I have to say, it was quite delicious. It’s not something I’m planning on eating on a regular basis, but I’ll try anything once. But in Northern Vietnam, it’s a lot easier to find on the menu…

I first noticed the difference from south to north when I saw “thit cho” on a lot of the signs. My Vietnamese is practically non-existent but I do know that this is the phrase for dog. Once I had seen it a couple times, I started looking for it and I realized that it’s found all over the place up here. In Hanoi, there’s a 1km-long district of dog meat joints. There’s definitely a stronger prevalence for dog-eating in the north.

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The advertisement.

I’m not going to lie, I am far from being physically fit. The only things I do are snowboard and skateboard and I haven’t touched either of those in about 8 months. I prefer to spend my days drinking mango shakes and lounging about. While on Cat Ba Island, Kris somehow convinced me it would be a good idea to go trekking so we ended up hiring a local Vietnamese guide to take us off the regular hiking trails and boy did he take us off the regular hiking trail. We ended up at a place called Butterfly Valley and our guide took us up some crazy mountain with a bit of a trail in some spots. This “hike” was essentially a day of rock climbing over jagged sharp rocks, a lot of bleeding from our shins and hands as a result of these sharp rocks and dodging spiders the size of my open fist. Kris, who is a seasoned hiker even found it to be quite challenging. After lounging for the last 8 months then doing this monster trek, I went into what Kris refers to as “shocking the body.” I had some serious aches the next few days. After all the blood, sweat and tears we were rewarded with some magnificent views and I’m glad I did it.

Nap time

There are 15 separate groups of ethnic minorities in Vietnam, the most colourful of which can be found in the north of the country. While in Sapa, we had the opportunity to experience two separate groups of hill tribes. Each group has its own distinct style of dress, customs, religious beliefs and language (though the national language is officially Vietnamese).

Life for the most part is difficult for many minority groups. Education and health care rates remain lower than the national average, and most people live a rural, agricultural lifestyle. Women marry young and life expectancy is low. But despite this, everyone we crossed paths with seemed happy, healthy, good-natured with a great sense of humour.

The two groups we encountered were the Black H’Mong and the Red Dzao. Both groups farm and also sell their wares at the market in Sapa. Both have a vibrant, elaborate style of dress, with the Red Dzao known for their long, flowing headdress and their hair shaved back from their foreheads, and the Black H’Mong recognized by their indigo-dyed embroidered linen clothing and super-cool Fame-era leggings. Both groups are canny traders and are relentless in their selling tactics. It worked on both Jen and I as we walked away from the market with a few pieces of jewelry and trinkets. We also hiked through 4 different villages in the area and got to see first hand the simple way they live. Pretty cool.