Today we went to Cat Lai Terminal. This was one of the 16 terminal ports operated by Tan Cang. Tan Cang is one of the biggest shipping companies in Vietnam with another 5 deep water ports, 7 feeders, and 4 barging terminals. Until now I did not have a full grasp of how big shipping…

Today was our trip to the Mekong Delta. We have been talking about this area since our classes started meeting. Today has been my favorite day because after ferrying to an island and getting a horse drawn carriage, we were given the chance to hold a Burmese Python. I had seen this in some pictures…

Our day started late as usual. It seems most of the group is unable to meet in the lobby at the specified time so we got to our class on Buddhism eventually. This was a really interesting class that taught us the major difference between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. That is that in Mahayana, which…

We started our day going out to visit Coherent. This confused me because we did summary presentations of all of the companies we were planning on visiting while still in school before leaving and we had done a presentation on II-VI, not Coherent. As it turns out, II-VI had bought Coherent and rebranded into that…

This weekend was a lot of fun. We first went up a small mountain and a statue of Jesus overlooking the Vung Tau beach, we then went to said beach and a pool connected to a hotel. On Sunday we went to the Cu Chi tunnels which was super cool to crawl through the Viet…

Today we saw the consulting company GreenViet. We heard how this company is designing buildings so that they are up to sustainability standards. We learned about the use of wind and solar to shift the power grid away from fossil fuels. An interesting fact that was brought up was the Vietnamese government paused their nuclear…

Today was our first full day in country and it was busy. We started off learning about some developments in the Mekong Delta area and learned a bit of Vietnamese. After lunch we headed off to our first company tour: TTT. TTT is an interior design and construction company. They seem to mostly work with…

Today after some unfortunate, but not severe, injuries to a cornea, we went to Power Engineering Consulting Company 2 for a tour. They told us about not only what they did, but also about some government initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint and shift to green energy. The first of the government initiatives that stood…

Today was one of the most inspiring visits we have had. We got to visit the Vina Capital Foundation which was a charity organization dedicated to the betterment of Vietnam. It was nice to hear an older voice accepting the problems created by the older generations and also doing something to fix it. Mr. Rad…

Today was awesome. After making it through some struggles at the airport, we got to the hotel and I was in bed by 2. At breakfast I experienced my first culture shock. It is one thing to read about and see pictures of how many Vietnamese people travel by motorcycle, but when the unending river…