Day 8: Another Caramel Freeze

Today we had a company visit in the morning about the Viet Thai International and Highland’s Coffee. We went to the Highland’s Coffee Training Center for a presentation on both companies. Viet Thai is a joint stock company that owns Highland’s Coffee as well as many other branches of food, consumer lifestyle and distribution companies in Vietnam. They own branches of Highland’s Coffee across Southeast Asia. The offices they have in the many countries have to work very closely with the local people to understand their culture, the labor market, and the things the people of that area value.  The other thing about Vietnamese and Southeast Asian companies is that they build relationship before they even consider building a partnership and conducting business. We also got to order Highland’s Coffee drinks again while the representative of Highland’s Coffee talked to us; I got a Caramel Freeze again! The Highland’s representative said how he found the coffee market interesting, has always has jobs involving coffee, and he even used to work for Maxwell Coffee in Canada. During the presentation, Bryce (our program assistant) pulled me aside and said there was a magazine writer from HCMC that had pictures from us on the beach the day before and wanted to interview a student for his article. I went out in the hall with our guide, Tran, who translated, for the interview. I talked about how I was enjoying the excitement and welcoming-warmth of Vietnam and its people. I also mentioned how Vietnam is more welcoming to foreigners that the US is, and that I was learning so much about international business and engineering from Vietnam as well.

For lunch, our group went to the Hard Rock Café, which is also owned by Viet Thai International. Our stomachs were so happy with the foods, and I think the guys almost died when a huge plate of ribs were brought to the table. I had some awesome nachos and a fruit smoothie. We call our group Team Yolo (You only live once), so we took a Team Yolo picture before we left while the rest of the restaurant watched.

In the afternoon, we went to the War Remnants Museum, which is a Vietnamese museum about Americans during the Vietnam War. Our leader, Dr. Berman, who fought in the Vietnam War, said he was skeptical to take us to the museum but felt we should see it while we were in Vietnam. We understood his hesitation after we toured the museum. It was shocking and eye-opening.

The UEF students picked us for dinner, and we went to a Japanese sushi restaurant. The seating was cool because we had to take our shoes off, and we sat on the ground around a lower table which had a hole below it for us to put our feet in. I ordered some sesame chicken and edema, which was delicious. Other students had sushi with seaweed, tuna and other fish. Afterward, we went to Snowee, the ice cream store that we went to the first week. I had some banana with vanilla ice cream, which topped off dinner. Tonight we are just chilling and laughing in the rooms and finishing blogs!