On day 10 of our trip, we started off by going to the Cat Lai Terminal, which is part of one of the largest ports in Vietnam. We drove around the terminal and got to see where all of the containers are stored and how they load containers on and off of boats. One advantage of them having the port in the area that it’s in close proximity to Ho Chi Minh City, the business capital of the country. I also learned that the many of the big ships that come from the US and Europe usually stop at a port in Singapore, where they split up the cargo in to smaller boats and spread out to different ports in Asia, such as Vietnam. Customs also searches every piece of cargo, at least partially, to make sure that it is not something illegal.
After our trip to the port, we then stopped at a mall and ate lunch at the food court. I have noticed that malls here are huge compared to the ones that we have in the US. The one that we went to today was six floors, and there were so many different things on each floor. For lunch, I had pork ribs and spring rolls with another mango smoothie, which might have been even better than the one yesterday.
We then went to the Reunification Place, which was the Presidential Palace up until the reunification of Vietnam in 1975. We got a tour of the whole palace, and got to many of the different rooms including the kitchen, the bunker, the president’s office, etc. Many of the rooms were beautiful. Even just looking at the palace from the lawn is an amazing sight to see.
Unfortunately, the trip is coming to an end, with only two days left, but I’m excited for these last couple days and I have had so much fun and learned so much on the trip so far.