Binh Duong Province

Today was our visit to the Binh Duong province with the students from H.S.U. The bus ride was interesting to say the least. I found out today that the Vietnamese students have great a love for singing (especially early in the morning!). It reminded me of a stereotypical American family road trip, like the kind you see in movies where everyone sings along. I wasn’t sure if that was the reason for the singing; to make us feel more “at home”, or if they legitimately enjoyed it.
One of our stops was at a company called Becamex. They showed us a presentation of a project called My Phuoc Industrial Park which started back in 2002. It is basically a huge plan to build an entire city to cater to industrial, commercial, and residential development. It covered all aspects of what a city should have such as electricity, water, telecommunication, internet, etc. From the plans and after visiting the actual site, it seemed like it was really well organized, and it gave a lot to look forward to for Vietnam – especially as a developing economy/country.
We then took a tour of a US-owned manufacturing company which made acrylic pieces. The warehouse was extremely hot… yet some of the students were wearing hoodies! Meanwhile, I am growing a beaded sweat mustache. I found it interesting when the owner was explaining to us that only women could work in the section where they check for faulty pieces because they pay more attention to detail. No equal employment opportunity commission here!
After leaving the inferno, we went to go do something I love- eat! The place where we had lunch had a huge table set up for us, and all the food was family-style, kind of like at P.F.Changs but bigger! We had several courses, and I noticed how the Vietnamese students always refill your plate or cup when it’s empty, which taught me to eat slower until the next meal arrived!
Our next stop was to take a quick look at the house that DRD (Disabled Recourses & Development) built for orphaned disabled young adults. We got to see the outside and were offered a few bananas when we were all hanging out on the yard area. The house seemed big, and it was really cool to see what an organization (which we may support) do for their cause.
The day continued on with a stop at the home of a single mother with two disabled children. To my surprise, they had paint and buckets outside, even though we had been told that we weren’t going to be painting. Being that I had limited formal outfits and we were told to dress formally that day, I opted not to paint. The time constraint we had also posed a problem to make any dent in the completion of the painting of the house… I felt like we had 5 minutes there to paint anyway so what was the point? At least we contributed to the daughter’s weekly kidney treatments with our donation J
This was our first free night for dinner, and we all went out to a place called Barbeque (or something like that). It was really neat- there was a hot plate in the middle and you order your food and they bring it out to you raw, where you cook it yourself. It was just like the restaurant The Melting Pot, except it was one tenth of the price! We continued by going to the famous Rex Hotel bar. It was located on this rooftop/terrace which gave a great view of the city! We each ordered one drink, and realized that it was NYC prices, therefore making it our one and only drink of the night! We walked home afterwards and called it a night!