Today we visited the educational center at the US consulate and spoke with a member of the economics team. The speaker was really good and it was very interesting to learn about the economic history of Vietnam, life of an fso and the services the consulate offers. One interesting thing we learned was how the career of being an fso is a very volatile one because they are always moving around and don’t have a lot of autonomy over their career moves since they can be placed in any country and have to stay there for 2 years. This was crazy to me because I can’t imagine working so hard to pass the tests needed to become a foreign service officer just to be rewarded with so much career volatility. This made me respect our presenter and all other foreign service officers a lot more because it shows how committed they are to civil service and they do all this work without the recognition that a lot of political officials get. Another interesting thing our presenter talked about was Vietnam’s economic goals including their main goal which is to become a high income country by 2045. Our presenter gave us a background on Vietnam’s economic landscape and told us the various steps the country is taking to maintain their extremely high growth rate and move towards their goals. Some of these steps include increasing foreign direct investment, improving domestic education programs, and expanding their global reach. The presenter was very enthusiastic about some of these steps and appeared confident that Vietnam can reach their lofty goal of becoming the high income country they think they can be. It’s because of this confidence and apparent alignment between the Vietnamese government, foreign government, and private businesses that I think Vietnam can reach this goal. I also really enjoyed talking to one of the directors of education that was in the library at the education center. She gave us a slightly different perspective than the economic worker which gave us an even more balanced view of all the operations of the consulate. When talking to her I learned more about how local Vietnamese students utilize the consulate for their studies. I also learned about the differences between immigration visas and educational visas. The key difference that stood out to me was how there is a quota style system for immigration but visas for work and education are on a more case by case basis to try and instigate more business and education development for Vietnam and its people. However this process has changed a little in the last few years due to the leadership changes that have happened in Vietnam with the new leaders placing a greater emphasis on domestic development rather than exporting talent to other countries. 

After the consulate visit we went to bargain for a few hours at the Banh Thanh market. It was a cool experience to walk around and see all the different products and see how the vendors would go about trying to negotiate with us. I had experience in a bargaining market in Guatemala and the market here was very similar to that one except even bigger. The one big difference though was the food options that were at the market. I originally thought it was just going to be knockoff purses and cheap clothes but there were a lot of stalls that were cooking hot food and selling exotic fruits which made the market an even more unique and immersive experience. My biggest takeaway from the market was how the vendors can be really shrewd negotiators but still maintain the strong service culture that is a staple of Vietnamese business. This mix was definitely dangerous for us Americans because it helped draw us in and made us want to buy souvenirs from them but it also made the experience more positive because even if we sometimes over-payed we felt good when interacting with the vendors. Overall Vietnam has been a great experience and ending our last “real” day with the consulate and market visit was a good balance between real world impacts and tourist flavor.