Today started with a tour of the Tan Cang Cat Lai shipping port, where we had to wear extremely fashionable fluorescent safety vests and hard hats. Seeing the port in all of its glory and magnitude was certainly not something that you see everyday, especially such a popular global port; the company focuses on efficiency and fills the port with lots of various heavy-duty machinery and tons of employees. I was a little surprised by the lack of uniforms throughout the facility, especially since they had us wear precautionary gear. The workers were just wearing colloquial(or minimal, given the heat) clothing, no hard hats or brightly colored vests or even a Tan Cang branded shirt. I guess this is just another one of the many differences between standards in America and Vietnam. It was so cool seeing the machinery operate to put the humongous cargo containers onto the ship and take others off, and seeing how many workers are needed for unboxing/distributing shipments on the conveyor belt. Later, when we were in the warehouse, there were so many forklifts whizzing by us with packages and then flying past us again, empty and headed towards the next set of packages to put away. In all honesty, I was being heavily reminded of my local Sam’s Club, what with all the tall stacks of products. I also think that seeing the operations there was interesting because I never would have imagined that everything they do there is what happens when I order something online. As for the “going green” aspect of the company, I did not notice much that would be considered sustainable, but then again there’s only so much the company can change; our guide mentioned their goal of switching away from diesel for their transportation, but I don’t know what they would use as a similarly-priced replacement – maybe a biofuel like vegetable oil. Although this tour was very informative and insightful, I felt so bad for our guide; while simultaneously being very knowledgeable/educational, she was also very kind and accommodating to us as we were struggling with the heat and heat exhaustion. She, along with our program directors/professors, moved us into the air-conditioned bus when possible so to prevent any of us from fainting or such, and continuously offered the company’s free medical services (side note, this is also a really neat thing about the company! Their hospital was in the building, in case any of the employees suffered the likely event of getting injured). I’m very thankful for her dedication to our group’s well-being, and I’m sure that it was overall very helpful.

We then drove to lunch, where we ate fried shrimp, fried rice, beef marinated in a very delicious sauce, fries(the most surprising part of the day), and more. From there, we had a long drive to our next site visit: Dan-D Pak/Dan-D Foods. Wow, did this place remind me of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory! It is primarily a nut factory, started by a Vietnamese man who was adopted by a Canadian family. I have unknowingly had one of their main products before – everything bagel seasoned cashews – which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I did, in fact, eat it again during the visit. Right when we got there, we had to take off our shoes and replace them with bright green Crocs so to keep the building relatively clean. We went upstairs to the Innovation Center, and while waiting for the tour to begin, I went to the bathroom where you have to take off your bright green Crocs and wear bathroom-designated dark blue Crocs instead. Inside the Innovation Center, there were multiple test kitchens, but the setup was exactly like that of cooking/baking shows, with the ingredients and ovens on the side and the rows of sinks, countertops, and cabinets in the middle. Our guide, Danny, then took us to see the pistachio rooms in the factory. There were so many robots(just another part of the factory that reminded me of Willy Wonka) filtering through the nuts and filling them into the containers, and the workers that we saw were wearing (understandably) extensive contamination-preventative gear. We were then driven in golf carts to the other side of the factory, and along the way we were shown mango trees, cashew trees, and the company’s amenities to the employees. The amenities consisted of a little golf course, a swimming pool, a spa, a gym, and a pond with lots of greenery and benches surrounding it. Though the employee use is limited(ex. female employees can use up to 1.5 hour in the spa per month), it was still incredible to see the generous treatment there. I’m not entirely sure why they have these facilities, but I can imagine that it really helps with employee retention/loyalty and production efficiency; I couldn’t help but think that they would probably never do this for employees in the US. On the other side of the factory, we had to step onto a machine that cleans the bottom of our Crocs before entering, and then we headed straight to a meeting room that connected us to the other rooms of the factory, where they managed many other nuts. We saw this one robot place a box of nut jars, in a very neat and orderly fashion, onto a box with numerous other nut jars. It blew my mind away for some reason. Viewing the rest of the rooms was so cool because we got to see the machine operations and how the company avoids cross-contamination with the workers’ uniforms and the separate rooms for each nut. We then went back to the conference room where Danny gave us a brief presentation about the founder’s history, the different Dan D factory locations, the company’s goals, and their philanthropy. Finally, we got driven back to the initial side of the factory (it started raining a lot), took a group picture, switched back to our normal shoes, went to the factory’s store where I bought pistachio butter(DIY Dubai chocolate time), and we went onto the bus so we could begin our journey back to the hotel. The bus ride took about three hours, but we filled the time with some fun karaoke and sleep.

My friends and I ended the night with Grabbing(essentially DoorDashing) some delectable Indian food and going to sleep.