Day 6 Reflection - May 27

Here are three things that I've learned from today's journey.

1) The first thing that I've learned are the challenges facing urban growth in Ho Chi Minh City. The first challenge is managing traffic con

gestion while the other challenge is developin

g new urban areas. These challenges can be overcome by avoiding low-lying wetlands such as Rocket Houses, develop satellite centers, discourage or delay the shift to automobile while encouraging the use of buses as you can see from the picture below that there are lots of people riding motorcycles in Vietnam.

2) Another thing that I've learned today is that there are two types of market in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City and they are either Traditional or Modern. For Traditional Markets, such examples are wet markets and they are usually run by the family and another example of a traditional market are bazaar stalls. A real example of a Traditional Market is An Uong, a market we visited earlier.

A picture of the sweet and kind lady at the market.

As for Modern Markets, such markets are like supermarkets and hypermarkets. They are convenience chain stores, specialty chain stores and online stores. A real example of a Modern Market is Vincom Center. A center that we visited earlier and bought a few stuffs there.

A picture of how the Modern Market looks like. Just like any shopping malls in Singapore.

3) The last and final thing that I've learned from today's learning journey is that there are about estimated 60.6 million consumers in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City. Majority that takes up 27.9% of the consumers are 20-29 years old. They have this mindset of spending more and saving less and to buy high complicated product requirements. They also like to spend more money on buying

healthcare products from other countries as they are cheaper and not from Vietnam as they are "fresh". Furthermore, They appreciate quality products. Some famous food products at Vietnam are the lotus seeds, cashew nuts, mango and coffee. Finally, the last market we visited was the Lotte Mart. This is a Modern Market and a picture of the market is shown in the picture below.

Done by

Tay Kun Yao

Day 4 Reflection - 25 May

From today's experience, I've learned that

1) The entire mangrove farm has about 24 different parts/areas. These areas are grouped into these three colours, Green, Blue and White. The Green areas are for people to do research for further development. The

Blue areas are strictly not for cutting down or reclaiming land. Finally, the White areas are the residential area. A picture of the farm split into 24 parts and divided according to their colours is shown below.

2) At the farm, there's a plant that during the season which is around May, they would turn from green to yellow to red. These plants are poisonous and when consumed, one could go blind. A picture of the plant is shown below.

3) The last thing that I've learned from today's experience is the shrimp farm. They earned millions of dong from selling their shrimps. However, they have to make long distances to the city in order to sell their goods. Also, they had to travel in a small boat that uses a motor. So, they had to spend money buying petrol for their boat. A picture of their boat is shown below.

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Tay Kun Yao

Day 3 Reflection - May 24

Here are three things that I have learnt from today's journey.

No.1) I've learnt that from the Cao Dai temple, there are four special animals specifically from the temple. They are Unicorn, Dragon, Turtle and Phoenix. These a

nimals sy

mbolize something unique. For example, the Unicorn symbolizes Prosperity, Dragon symbolizes Power,

Turtle symbolizes longevity and Phoenix symbolizes Beautiful (This is towards the ladies.)

No.2) Another thing that I've learnt is the culture at the temple. The culture tries to combine religions to form peace. These "Religions" are seen as three different colours. From my contextual knowledge, yellow shows Buddhism and the other two which are Confucianism and Taoism could be either red or blue. After research, Confucianism is red and Taoism is blue. At the same time, a part of their culture is that men stands at the left hand while wom

en stands at the right hand. This can be seen in the photo below. The picture shows the people praying to the god, Yin which is the left eye that shows light to the people.

No.3) Last but not least, the last thing that I've learnt from today's journey at the Cu Chi Temple is how smart they built they're tunnel. Their tunnel is underground and away from the surface. The tunnel is where they live after their village was dest

royed by the bomb from the planes. Their way of surviving underground is by having many air holes that can be found at almost every 20 meters away. They also had a well built underground. They turned the smoke released underground into mist so that they would not be easily spotted by the enemies when the "smoke" gets released into the surface. An example is shown in the picture below.

By Tay Kun Yao