Today’s schedule was the reverse of the typical day so far, with classes in the afternoon and a company visit in the morning. This allowed us some extra time to sleep in and I used the morning to FaceTime home to wish my mom a happy Mother’s Day! We left the hotel at 9:45, but the company meeting wasn’t scheduled until 10:30 so we were given 15 minutes to walk around and explore the area. This gave me time to stumble upon a small fresh breakfast spot where I picked up a couple croissants and a pineapple smoothie for a quick meal. Once 10:30 rolled around, we headed up the elevator to a conference room so we could here from the executives of today’s company, VinaCapital.

VinaCapital is an asset management group that invests in a vast array of companies and other industries and manages stocks and mutual funds for investors. In Vietnam, this is a fairly new practice so many citizens are extremely wary of investing their money, and they simply don’t have much money to invest. For this reason, a part of VinaCapital’s operations are focused on education the public about the merits of investing their money. Even if these attempts are successful, often these investments are as small as five dollars so VinaCapital must have some sets of very liquid assets so they can be prepare to quickly repay small sums of money. Another portion of VinaCapital is the Foundation, a branch focused on giving back to the community in any way possible. Overall, this was a very intriguing corporation that I would like to learn more about going forwards. After our company visit, we headed back to UEF for a quick lunch and culture and language classes. We learned a little bit about how to ask what things cost and how to barter in language class, skills I am ready to pull out at the market tomorrow!