Today our group was able to visit the Cat Lai Terminal in the morning and then visit the Reunification Palace in the afternoon after eating at a food court for lunch. The Cat Lai Terminal is a shipping port that handles the customs process and the loading and unloading of all cargo. What was interesting about this particular site visit was that they really let us see everything involved in the business of the port, including the packing of a cargo truck, the customs office, and the control tower. Getting into what exactly the Cat Lai Terminal does, this port is run by the government and it has a customs office that cargo must pass when they are either leaving the country or coming into the country. To go through customs, each cargo bin is x-rayed and assigned a color of either blue, yellow, or red. With a blue color, the bin is good to go and can proceed further. With a yellow color, the bin must have documentation to process. Finally, with a red color, the bin must have documentation processed as well as be searched for anything suspicious. With all of the different colors and with thousands of cargo bins on site, the Cat Lai Terminal keeps track of their freight by sending a message to the control tower whenever a bin is moved so that the most updated location of the bin is listed. The Cat Lai Terminal also slightly touched upon why the location they are at is beneficial. According to them, the Cat Lai location works well because it is close to the major city of Ho Chi Minh but also has easy access to many different countries via the river they are located on. The only negative about the location, though, is that due to the location of a river and not on the ocean, it is hard for big cargo ships to get to the site due to their size and the small size of the river.

After the Cat Lai Terminal, we headed to the Reunification Palace and went on a guided tour through the different rooms. I found it really interesting to see the palace and how the president used to live before the Communist government took over. It was clear that although this palace is not really used today anymore, it still holds an important meaning to the Vietnamese. To them, the Reunification Palace is a symbol of peace between the North and South Vietnamese, which is even seen in the name itself.