The Cat Lai Terminal welcomed us with the sweet sounds of commerce. Trucks and creaking shipping containers accompanied the intense heat. We learned about the port’s capacity and expansion plans. Vietnam’s rapid growth puts major stress on ports as they struggle to keep up with the volume of shipping traffic. Cat Lai has to expand into the river, because there’s no available land further inland or along the coast.
The labor at Cat Lai was pretty intense, we saw a group workers stacking 40 pound bags of rice from a domestic ship into a shipping container. I gave it a try, and I can only imagine how tiring it would be for an entire shift in that heat. The more technical side of the port seemed intense too, but much more interesting. The terminal uses management systems to organize the flow of cargo and to schedule the unloading/loading of the ships.
After the terminal, we visited the American Consulate. We spoke with an economist who gave us a crash course on the Vietnamese economic condition. I wish we had time to ask a few more questions, but he did a great job explaining how Vietnam’s gradual embrace of the private sector has enabled its supercharged growth over the past couple decades. Vietnam’s growth demands even faster energy production growth. They use a lot of solar and wind power, but they haven’t properly built out the transmission systems. Because of this, lots of solar and wind projects have been scrapped, and Vietnam continues to heavily rely on coal power. Burning so much coal has worsened Vietnam’s pollution crisis. Nuclear energy buildout has been discussed in Vietnam, but it’s not clear if any progress is being made. With a likely increase in data centers in Vietnam’s future, nuclear seems like the only long-term solution to me.
To round off our economics talk, we engaged in some free trade at the market. I bargained my purchases down to a cumulative 75% discount which sounds great to me, but according to our Vietnamese friends is still a bit expensive. It’s hard to complain when it still seems like such a good deal. The market is truly a part of the Saigon experience. Knowing you’re a walking target as a tourist is always part of the fun.
Tomorrow calls for many goodbyes. It’s going to be pretty rough. I’m already thinking about when I can come back, but I know that I’m going to miss all of our Vietnamese friends while back across the world. Hard goodbyes conclude chapters with real friends, and for that I am very grateful.
