Today was the last company visit which is the company that Lili, Claire, Sydney, and I have been assigned to. Saigon Newport Corporation (SNP) is a company that specializes in port operations, logistic services, and shipping/sea services. SNP is state owned by the administration of defense and was founded in 1989. They manage a 16-port system and today we visited their container port located in Saigon called the Cat Lai Terminal, which is the most modern and biggest port in Vietnam.
I was pleasantly surprised with how interesting I found this company visit to be. The presentation and tour of the shipping port were extremely well executed. I learned a lot about the company and the way they manage to efficiently complete such large operations. SNP has 18 functional departments, centers & branches, 16 terminals, 29 subsidiaries, and 17,200 workers. They currently receive 81 vessels per week and unload or load 81 containers per hour. The large amount of data that I was able to take notes on during the presentation really helped me understand the magnitude of the port and the work that is being done/organized.
SNP’s creation of their E-Port is evidence of their continued development and globalization. Their E-Port was built for customers 10-15 years ago for them to have an easier way to pay and track their shipments online instead of coming to the port which can be dangerous. Although, their initial idea for the E-Port may not have been to utilize technology to expand their network that has been one of the results. The E-Port allows customers to no longer have to be a local to utilize their ports. SNP’s increased global connections via the E-Port is evident by the fact that the United States and China make up for the largest amounts of exports and imports.
Later in the afternoon, after the company visit and lunch, we all went shopping for an hour at the Banh Thanh market. I want to extend a huge thank you to my friend from UEF named Annie. Annie went above and beyond to go with me throughout the market. She helped me negotiate with different vendors and showed me where everything was. My first thoughts as Annie and I started shopping was how overwhelming everything was. Between dodging the crowd and hearing “ma’am, would you like” every other second, I did not even know where to start looking.
What I found the most interesting about my experience at the market was the different attitudes of the vendors. Some were extremely pushy, and Annie and I both left the conversation feeling disrespected. Meanwhile, other vendors were extremely kind and understanding when I said, “no thank you”. This further proved the concept that making generalization about a group of people is never the culturally competent thing to do. Every person in that group of people which in this example is vendors are individuals and conduct their business differently than the vendor next to them.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed today’s company visit and shopping at the market. Shopping at the market and negotiating prices was so far out of my comfort zone and something I have never done before. In the beginning, I definitely paid too much for certain things, but by the end I was having fun negotiating and was able to get good prices.
Tomorow is the last day in Vietnam, and I have many mixed emotions. I am excited to be back home, but these past two weeks have been one of the best experiences of my life. I am so deeply grateful that I have had the chance to go on this trip and these memories will truly stay close to my heart forever. Everyone always says that studying abroad is life changing and it seems so cliche, but they are not wrong.