Today, we got to go to the Mekong Delta, probably the second-best trip of the program, shortly behind the day at Vung Tau. Once we got to the delta, we took a boat across the river, where we ate some of the common fruits in Vietnam which included finger bananas (sweeter than normal bananas, but…

On day 10 of our trip, we started off by going to the Cat Lai Terminal, which is part of one of the largest ports in Vietnam. We drove around the terminal and got to see where all of the containers are stored and how they load containers on and off of boats. One advantage…

Today was probably our busiest day of our trip to Vietnam. It started this morning with a lecture about Buddhism at UEF. I found the lecture to be a very interesting lecture. I didn’t realize that Buddhism is considered to be a philosophy rather than a religion. Learning about some of the ideas of Buddhism…

On day 8 of our trip to Vietnam, we had two site visits in Binh Duong to the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) and II-VI, which is a company located inside of VSIP. The first visit was to VSIP. We learned that VSIP is a joint venture between Singapore and Vietnam, and that some of…

Today we went to see the Cu Chi Tunnel System used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. This was the first time we really got to see the actual jungle area of Vietnam. Today felt like the hottest day, probably at least partially caused by the high humidity caused by the tropical forest….

Today was by far my favorite day of the study abroad program so far. It started off a little rough with us leaving the hotel at six in the morning, but by the end of the day I realized that getting up early was well worth it. We then embarked on a three-hour drive to…

On Day 5 of our study abroad trip to Ho Chi Minh City, we started off our day by going to the US Consulate. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to go in to the actual Consulate building, and instead we went to the American Center in a building across the street. During our visit, we learned…

Day four of our trip to Vietnam was an interesting one. It started off in the morning with us attending two lectures at the University of Economics and Finance here in Ho Chi Minh City; a Vietnamese language class and a class on the history and culture of Vietnam. We have had the language class…

On day 3 of our trip to Vietnam, we visited a Vietnamese company called Glass Egg Digital Media. Glass Egg is known mainly for their 3-D art outsourcing, most of which is for video games, but they also do a bit of 2-D art outsourcing and game development. Being an art outsourcing company in the…

During Day 2, we focused more on the academic aspect of the trip, attending an urban development lecture in the morning along with our Vietnamese language class and then a site visit in the afternoon. During the urban development lecture in the morning, we learned about how Vietnam focused on improving its infrastructure after its…

Unfortunately, the torrential downpour this afternoon dampened our experience during the Ho Chi Minh city tour, and so we were not able to spend as much time observing the different landmarks in the city. I did, however, notice multiple signs of both development and globalization in the city. Firstly, a major signal of the country’s…