Vinh Long Community service project – Renovating a school

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This is among a series of stories we tell you about our Vinh Long Community service project. We come to Vinh Long to renovate a school which is too old and we hope to bring safety and new studying environment to the lovely students here.

Our group stays at a backpacker hotel right in the middle of Hochiminh City. Though we share three or four people per room but it’s quite OK for a good a price and a great location. It is so centrally located and we can walk around for visiting city highlights like war museum, presidential palace, temples, opera house, central post office and other beautiful stuffs.

Today we head to Mekong Delta on a public bus for a Vinh Long Community service project. The bus goes fast on a highway over green rice farm stretching to the horizon. We have a lot of talk about Mekong life, Mekong people and background why we should come there. We stop halfway at a local stopping point. We learn many new types of tropical fruits that we have never seen in our life. We even don’t remember all of those names. We just recognize that the food life is much bigger than our imagination. We reward ourselves with some local ice-cream.

We arrive hour homestay of Mr. Tam around noon. Just after a short check-in into our rooms, we meet him and his wife Ms. Sau for a welcome in the family. The lunch comes after with local food. It is a true Vietnamese lunch cooked by Ms. Sau. She only stay at this town and even rarely come to Saigon then she knows nothing about Western food. It’s yummy anyway. She also picks oranges from garden and we love it. Mr. Tam has a big garden of fruits and oranges are countless. We have also enjoyed 5 full day meals with orange juice from that garden. Possibly it helps us to stay stronger.

After lunch we have a small nap before starting our Vinh Long Community service project. Every body here do that as it’s hot at noon and a siesta is great to recover after that travel from Hochiminh city.

We head to the school where we run our Vinh Long Community service project by boat. That’s a lovely way of transporting as our boat goes along green canals, passing many other boats, along many houses with local lives along the river bank. We even see things and people in the house along the river as most of houses stay just by the river bank. We have transport to the school among the lush great of Mekong and authentic Vietnamese life exposure.

As arriving the school, we come to meet students, teachers and the principle for the initial introduction. We also meet our master builders and local people who come to help a hand to renovate the school. We quickly start out working with big enthusiasm. First we move sand from outside to the classroom to make the floor higher. It will help much when flood comes. The floor should be higher than the regular flood and high tide. Secondly, the master builders throw tiles from roofs to the ground. The tiles are so old and this is the reason for leaking at raining time. We smash the tiles into small pieces and make them even on the new floor of the classroom. It looks simple job but it needs a lot of energy from us.

After finishing two classrooms, we decide it’s done for the first day. We return home by the same boat along the same routes of canals. However, it’s higher tide than noon time and we need to walk a bit farther than before. This is even greater because we have chance to walk across beautiful tropical fruit gardens of local people.

We are so hungry and after the shower we all head to the tables and sit to wait for the dinner. It’s beautiful food again though we are really not sure what we are eating. What do you think about our first day of Community service project Vinh Long?

Vietnam service learning Ben Tre – the goodbye to Mekong village

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We have done one more day of Vietnam service learning Ben Tre. This is the fifth day and we will finish our participating on the project to move on the new adventures in Vietnam.

In fact the project is not done today yet. You know, building a toilet is not just for 5 or six days. However, we have many others to learn from the trip. So, we will hand over things for the master builders to help us to build the toilet for the lovely students. Of course, we still try best in mixing cements, providing rocks, making roof.

And also, the Vietnam service learning Ben Tre has come to another part of the process. It need more skills like flatting the walls with cements, like tiling the wall tiles, and other tasks that need skillful master builders. This means we have less things to do. And this makes us some adventures into the local life.

We divide our team into two groups. One group still helps builders in building material supplying, the other come to the village and visit the surrounding. And we change the shift after two hours. Our Vietnam service learning Ben Tre is then with more things to remember.

We walk on the village trails and see how the local use their toilet. This confirms our right decision why we should build a toilet for them at this trip of Vietnam service learning Ben Tre. Their toilets are often just a small box over a canal, and you can imagine how it affects the environment. We see some very poor people collecting tree leaves just to earn 30 cents per day. We see how the local make more money with tropical fruit gardens. And we see many more. On top of those, we are so trilled to visit a local farm where the local bring up some so-called “elephant leg” chicken. We have never seen it before. The chicken is regular but their legs are as big as their heads, making the feeling the leg of elephant on the body of chicken. They say that the chicken bring a lot of money as the rich families in cities want to eat this special kind of chicken which are not popular at all. Nevertheless, that is not the only amazing thing of the day we see. We visit another house and they earn living by bring up huge pythons. The pythons are in the cages with locks but this does not help our skin not to get a goose bump. We see them alive, looking at us as a hello for the strangers.

We finish the project and the visiting. We clean the ground for the tranfering, and we call it a half-way celebration for the toilet. We do really make a celebration. After our speech of handing over the sponsoring money to the principal, their representative, the principal, comes to make some long speech on thanks and gratitude. A student from our group also makes a speech on thanks for letting us to have this great Vietnam service learning Ben Tre. The next are some singing performance from a little girl then from a group from that school. This makes us beautiful feeling as a real celebration of important things. We have more hugs, thanks, playing ball together, and picturing together next to our half-way built toilet.

The saying goodbye is the hardest part of the trip. The students staying around us and many do not want to go home. The school children even run after us and cry when we walk to the boat quay for the boat trip back to homestay. It is a so emotional moment.

On the way back to homestay, we also visit a local house to see how they make business from weaving reeds to make mats for sleeping. In Vietnam it’s hot then these mats are so cool to sleep on (for them, as this is so hard for us).

After dinner we make a walking to the village down town and have some local ice cream. We not only have an ice cream, but also touch more to local lives. We see young people train their kungfu. We see many people rush to night classes. We see free people with their entertainment on special local food. In conclusion, we have a chance to see how the local people in a small town in the middle of Mekong delta Vietnam hang out for their night life.

The amazing part of the night goes on with a visit to a garden to see thousand of fire flights on trees sparkling in the middle of the dark night. We caught one and really enjoy the reason why it sparkles and the knowledge of how it sparkles. We have never done that before and this is much more interesting than any book of describing the fire flights.

In the following day we have saying goodbye to our host and make a departure to Saigon, ending a beautiful Vietnam service learning Ben Tre that we will nenver forget.

Vietnam student trip Ben Tre and playing with school children

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Today is a great day of our Vietnam student trip Ben Tre as we spend more time to play with children in addition to the prime task of building the toilet.

It means that we also do the same things as we are doing there daily. We start the day as normal with breakfast with local soup. Some girls prefer to have breads and that’s no problem as we have a local bakery not far from there and his bread is great. The coffee in Vietnamese style is more popular among students as any try to make a sip to understand what makes many Vietnamese love it. And we also spend a lot of sweats for brick laying, for sand transporting, for mortar making and other hard jobs. We also take time on breaks with bananas and cookies and other sweaties.

However, we stop earlier in the morning and start later in the afternoon and we have great time to play with the children at the school we help. So, what funs are there for us in this Vietnam student trip Ben Tre?

The first one can be our teaching time. We teach them English and this is great as they never access the people with native English accent like us. We speak slowly and they repeat after us word by word. We are a big group and we spread to all tables in the class and talk with them one by one after the main show in the blackboard. It’s so noisy as we have many people and many group talk different things at the same time. However, we are so excited and that’s still great. We teach them counting, colors, body organs or any things that are easy for them to understand us by non-verbal language.

The second one are the singing together some songs. We sing head, shoulder knee and toe song then chicken dance and the local student follow us very fast.

The next one is a game that we never play before. We have a small thing with feather; we stay in a circle in the school yard and try to kick the small thing by foot, and not to let it drop on the group. The one with bad kicking and making the small thing drop on the ground is a failure. It’s really a very good exercise. It makes us even more exhausted. However, it’s very fun

The students are so enthusiastic in playing with us. They don’t want to go home for lunch even their parents are ready at the school entrance for long time to wait for them to go home. And the ones with afternoon class shift also try to go to school early to have more time to play with us.

On our way back home in the afternoon, we have small adventure that even make our day of Vietnam student trip Ben Tre is even with more amazing memories. We walk back to our boat for a boat drive back homestay, but our boat is suddenly of malfunction. We get help with a lift by a coconut boat. The cocobut boat push our boat for a while on its way, and we feel so fun as we are around by a lot of coconut, the middle of a Mekong with honey afternoon sun and great coconut forest.

Before the coconut boat makes a turn to another river branch, it takes us to a coconut workshop and that’s so sweet. That’s a place where the local people produce things from coconut, and we are so lucky to see this. We see that they peel the coconut fibers from the fruits and this is for making matress or robs to pull boats. We see that they break coconut skull to take water for making additives. We see that they take coconut flesh and use it to make soap, jam and coconut candy. And we did have a great time eating the sweet coconut candy, by a bank of Mekong river, on a great afternoon. That’s the moment we never forget.

We have another boat come and take us to the homestay. We have showers and make some laundry by tubs, detergent and brush supplied by the host.

Don’t think the party time is over. After our delicious dinner with local food, we have a karaoke. That’s a real karaoke and we could not believe we can do that in the middle of Mekong Delta Vietnam. We have a small TV of 32 inches but we have big speakers, and we have a laptop with internet, and we have all English songs in our favourite list. That’s amazing.

We go to bed with a feeling that our Vietnam student trip Ben Tre is an adventure full of sudden amazing experience.

Vietnam student tour Ben Tre – community service and local life – 2nd day

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The second day of our Vietnam student tour Ben Tre in building the toilet happens with more operation in community service and touching more local life.

Vietnam student tour Ben Tre with touching more local life.

We have breakfast in the local house of Mr. Muoi. The main course is bread with eggs but we also taste new thing. We have coffee with condensed milk which is a very typical drink of local people in the morning. We also have some pomelo fruit, right in the middle of a tropical fruit garden, and listen to the story of Vietnamese coffee.  It’s great to know that Vietnam is a world leading country exporting coffee to the world when enjoying the right way of Vietnamese coffee drinking. The coffee is the first touch.

The morning walk along village trails takes us across gardens of tropical fruits. We see pomelo, jack fruits, rese apple and others. We arrive boat quay but visit a local market before taking the boat trip. The market is on the riverside for the ease of access by boat for all local people here. Most of local commodity is transported by boats, and local people also go here and there by boat a lot too. The local market is another very touch of our Vietnam student tour Ben Tre today. The market is amazing with local buying and selling all things for their daily life. They sell clothes, hats, hair wears, watchs and sourvernirs. All kind of tropical fruits, vegetables, agricultural products are ranged in the ground for any to buy and cook their lunch and dinner of that day. We also see butchers selling beef, chicken, pork, ducks in the

The hospitality of people in the market is the next touch to the local daily life. The sound hello hello are from anywhere, coming with smiles and laugh.

We have a walking into the market, visit many corners and going back to the boat quay for the cruise to our project site as normal.

Vietnam student tour Ben Tre with being a true builder.

Today we focus on building more walls for the toilets. We divide our team into groups with many functions. The first group is arranged to transport brick and supply brick to builders (who are master builders and us students). They are brick supplier. The second group continues transporting sand from the boat in canal to our site. They are sand supplier. Another group is responsible for supplying mortar. They mix sand, cement, and water with a percentage instructed by the master builders and bring mortar to us the builders. Our forth group lays bricks to make wall. It’s not difficult because the master builders have instructed us carefully and also make lines by fabric strings so we are able to make straight walls. More walls have come into being.

Rain comes but people still work as we feel we enjoy building the toilet. Luckily it’s just a short rain and we are not wet with our hats.

Around 11:00 AM we stop for lunch. It’s hot and we have worked for a while and we need to have a rest too. We walk to a local house next to the school. They are ones welcome us and cook us the lunch for days we are here. The homestay is too far and it’s not smart to go back and return after lunch.

We come to the house, having some washing to make sure our body clean after being a true builder. We then got introduced to family members. We visit their house and understand their life belief with their family alters and things for their ancestors. That’s a great touch to their daily life.

We have good food or we are so hungry and we eat much or both. We don’t know, but we enjoy that very much. After lunch we have a nap on mats like any local people here with their daily siesta.

After more working in laying bricks to build the toilet are back to homestay by boat, along so beautiful canals with water coconut in the middle of honey sunshine of afternoon.

Vietnam student tour Ben Tre with cooking experience.

The last Vietnam student tour Ben Tre event of the day is a cooking experience. After having a cool shower, we all move to kitchen and the ost instruct us how to cook Vietnam pancake. We cook pancakes for our own dinner, and that’s fantastic.

It’s another long day of Vietnam student tour Ben Tre with service learning, but we are so happy to see many events, to meet many people, to visit many places, and to experience many new things to our life.

Vietnam service learning in Mekong – Build a toilet – First day

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Today we start one of the most exciting days of Vietnam service learning. We participate in a community service program in building a toilet for a local primary school. The school has no toilet and we will help around 60 children to have a place to answer the natural call of their body: just go to pee.

This is really not a big think at Western countries but a real big problem for children at most of schools in rural Vietnam. There is no toilet or toilet is too bad to go to pee. School time in Vietnam is often 3-4 hours and students do not go to pee within this period. This leads to health issues at kidney. And adults does not drink enough water as they keep the habit of drinking little water at their childhood so as they don’t have to have demand to go to toilet at school.

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We have a taxi drive from our characteristic hotel to the bus station to catch a pubic bus to Ben Tre Mekong Vietnam. Getting on public bus is special experience. It is cheap to save cost to our project. It is also a good observation to understand more the local people. The bus drive takes us thru the huge green rice farms of the fertile Mekong rice bowl of Vietnam. After some more great view of rivers, canals, farms, we arrive the local house of Mr. Muoi where we have homestay for our Vietnam service learning experience.

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That’s a little man with small eyes and big smiles. He welcomes us to his house. We look around his house and his big garden, and then arrange every people to beds in the house.

After a lunch of steam rice with fish and pork in claypot cooked with coconut, we walk to the boat quay and cruise along beautiful green canals to the site of Vietnam service learning project. That’s a great boat trip along the river of Mekong and it amazing canals. The view is so beautiful with water coconut ranges aong those canals. We see many local factories of brick production, fish processing or other kinds of factories. On the river, there are many local boats back and forth for their distinctive transportation way. There are also fishing nets, fishing traps, sand badges, and local boats full of local fruits from gardens to market.

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As arriving the community project site of our Vietnam service learning, we have some introduction to the master builders, the teachers and the local people there. We also have a brief on what to do then start to participate in building the toilet immediately. We carry sand from canal to the building site. We load bricks to the right location. We learn to mix cement with sand for a good mortar. We lay bricks with mortar, and build a real toilet.

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There are many local people coming to visit us because they are so surprised about this. There is also a lady with invitation to her house to have some coconut drinks. And we feel quite excited to visit her house with the promised beautiful taste of the fresh coconut right from the trees. After the time at the project, we go along lush gardens of tropical fruits, along trails at villages and visit her house. She asks her brother to pick a lot of coconuts at the garden. We have not only the taste of good coconut, but also the hospitality of the local and the special visit to such an authentic life style of Vietnamese Mekong Delta.

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On the way back, the surprise does not finish. We have low tide then we should have a short walk across gardens to the place our boat can pick us up. The beautiful sun beam makes our walking so adorable. And what is more, we end the walking at a local house where they make pickle lemon for Vietnamese drinking flavor, and we learn one more way of Vietnamese food, as well as interact more with local people.

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That’s a long day but it’s a great day of beginning the service learning experience in Mekong delta Vietnam.

Vietnam School Tour Mekong – Nature and Daily Life

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Mekong Delta Vietnam is a so beautiful place with green nature and distinct daily life. The Vietnam School Tour Mekong is then the must do tour for groups coming to the South. Some of our programs includes community service project in Mekong, and that’s wonderful. We have full time integrating into the green beauty of Mekong, as well as touching the the culure of mekong people. This is also one of the poorest area in Vietnam, then the community services are true helps to change the lives of local people.

In some programs we have community services at other places, we also visit Mekong in one day. Then we can enjoy the special highlights of this land.

Mekong Delta in Vietnam is a land of maze of canals. The main river separates into 9 rivers like nine dragons in the local legends. Canals from those 9 rivers make lush beauty of the land. Boating into the canals in a Vietnam School Tour Mekong is great experience then. In this picture, students wear the conical hats which are a traditional hats of Vietnamese women.

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What can students see along the cruise at Vietnam School Tour Mekong ?

Firstly, among that background of canal life, students can visit the floating market which are places many boats gathering on the river to buy and sell and barter fruits and vegetables from their gardens. Students can learn stories of mobile lives on these boat, especially chidlren, which poor condition of education. Enjoying the amazing beauty of the floating market, students also get touched with the stories of lives.

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Seeing floating market, we need to sit on small boats going into the crowd of those thousand boats and see the bargain and exchange happen.

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Secondly, faces of children along the cruise make bright side of the experience. Among the poor houses with limited condition of living, we even see the most sparkling smiles. The happiness can be transferred from the poor children to our students.

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Thirdly, seeing life along the cruise is a better lesson than any in the classroom. We can see people do housework. We can see them do business. The exposure can be also hygen condition of life, family daily life activities, fishing from the river, ferries and the local etiquettes, etc. Those are real beauties that not any book of culture introduction can be better.

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Forthly, visiting local businesses in a Vietnam School Tour Mekong is an opportunity to understand more about locla life. In addition to having income from fishing, from rice farming, students can see how the local earn. Students can visit a brick factory and learn the whole process of making brick in Vietnam, especially with material and techniques from local experts.

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Experiencing Vietnam School Tours, students can eat alot of foods from rice, especially noodles. Visiting such a factory making noodle is also able to amaze students.

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How about popcorn? Do Vietnamese eat popcorn at cinema? We probadly don’t and we use rice instead. Visiting a family making poprice is also great chance to understand local snack. We can see how they we roast rice, how we process with a three generation business. We also can sit down and enjoy those beautiful sweeties among the atmosphere of Vietnamese house.

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Fifthly, Mekong canals are full of water cocot nut. Having a sampan rowing along these peaceful canals and being away from noise of modern life makes the most tranquil feeling of getting lost in nature.

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Sixthly, our Vietnam School Tour Mekong can stop at a locla house and enjoy folk music of Mekong people that has been acknowledged as Immaterialism World Hertage by UNESCO. We might not understand the lyrics of the songs, but we enjoy the melody as well as ways Mekong people act via scenes at the music show.

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Seventhly, we think visitting local house are of most discovery feeling for our students. We touch true local life and we meet cuties like in the picture below.

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Among our walking and cycling along trails at Mekong delta Vietnam, we can stop any where at a locla house and drink some very fresh coconut from them. We can relax but still discover daily life around, even just by endulging yourself into a hammuck and looking around.

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Ninethly, we have many challanges in Mekong and with friends around us, we can overcome those. Eating durian is an example of that. Imagine we visit a garden of durian and learn how they plan those. And of course we might be invited by the host the durian. And hahahaha…

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Last but not least, it’s so beautiful to interact with local kids.  Some are poor and some are better. However, they will come around with smiles. Though langguage can be a barrier but we believe cobversations are not big problems at all.

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Vietnam School Tour Mekong trip is of more things to discover. Don’t miss this when coming to South of Vietnam in your once for a life time trip.

Vietnam school tours Hanoi – the student trip to Oriental

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One of our questions for our student trips is how to insert more the educational value to the visiting sites. Vietnam school tours Hanoi still make that with distinctive features for an Oriental city.

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There are many ancient temple and pagodas in the city and these are inevitably the destinations of our trips. Those are the authentic exposure of the special culture of Vietnam. We will visit some temples which are of strong impact from Taoism. This reflects the main ideology and life style of Vietnamese on Taoism. We also visit one or two pagodas of Buddhism which is the main religion in Vietnam. Students will have chance to listen to tour leaders to explain on the special features of the beliefs, the architecture of temples and pagodas. Learning things at sights at Vietnam school tours Hanoi like this will make students understand very well the special features of this oriental culture. Local tour leader are also experts in culture so students will gain impactful understanding on the day trip.

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Meeting and witnessing people coming to the temples and pagodas are also opportunities for learning about the culture. There might be little need of words of explanation from local tour leader. And combining with seeing the praying and conducting the ritual processes, students can have learn faster than reading a long book about Oriental culture.

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What are the really special features of Hanoi as compared to other Oriental cities? Your Vietnam school tours Hanoi will definitely take you to the mausoleum of Hochiminh, the leader of Vietnam at the wars. Students will have chance to visit his embalmed corpse. That’s a unique experience that you might not have chance to do it again in your life. Together with watching the changing guard parades, students can have a very true feeling on Vietnam.

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Visiting Hanoi Hilton is another aspect of educational travel. It is a part of a big lesson of war of Indochina and Vietnam War later on. Hanoi Hilton is a nick name of Hoa Lo prison. The nick name was made by US B52 bombing pilots who have been jailed here for a while before going home.

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What is more, your Vietnam school tours Hanoi could not miss a cyclo ride along the ancient streets of Hanoi. Cyclo is a kind of rickshaw which its driver is at the back of passengers. This no engine vehicle rolls on the colorful streets of Hanoi, bring a great close up to the local daily life Vietnam.

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Your Vietnam school tours Hanoi also have 60 minutes on a theatre to see a very typical culture show of Red River Delta people: water puppet show. The delta is constantly impacted by the flood very year. The water puppets are the games of local people to entertain among flood time. Moreover, the water puppet show tells the stories of Vietnamese histories, cultures and daily life. The music, the musical instruments, the voices of singer at the show make deeper discovery for students.

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Don’t forget small things at Vietnam school tours Hanoi like a walking along streets in the Old Quarter Hanoi and seeing a busy life around.

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Last but not least, the food makes big part in our Vietnam school tours Hanoi. We might eat at some restaurants with special history, and unique fishes. However, we always visit KOTO, a restaurant cooked and served by street children. This social enterprise collects homeless children and gives them accommodation, trains them English, trains them how to cook and to serve. Eating there is a simple way to encourage the children to join the good site of life. Students can have opportunities to gain a skill. They can also graduate and work at some famous hospitable entities in the city. The society has one better citizen, and it will have less one bad crime.

Our Vietnam school tours Hanoi has more things than this, as the city is so rich in culture and heritages. Join us as we always try to integrate educational values to our student trips.

Vietnam school tours Cuchi Tunnel – a live Museum of War

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Cuchi Tunnel is one of the very special destinations of the world. It is  a kind of a museum of war of humand kind. Our Vietnam school tours Cuchi Tunnel is then an opportunity for students to understand the guerrilla warfare techniques. It helps students to imagine what happens at the war time, how the local people can live The extraordinary life in the tunnel is also a good comparison for students to their current happy life.

We start the day from Saigon in an early morning. The local people Saigonese have been poured to streets by motorbikes to their working places. After an hour of driving, we have get out of the city center and enter into the green color of Cuchi.

It’s not about rice farms. We have those in Cuchi but it’s not many. The land is too hard. It’s good for tunnel but not good for rice farms. The green color can come from vegetable farms or rubber plantations.

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Our Vietnam school tours Cuchi Tunnel stops by  a rubber plantation. We follow our project leader to discover the stories of the rubber tree, how and when and why to collect the latex. We really have chance to touch the rubber tree knowledge at fields. In some days we also can meet workers collecting rubber latex and their working is amazing to see.

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The next stop of Vietnam school tours Cuchi Tunnel is a local house where our project leader introduces us to the host. She makes rice papers to sell those to the village. The visit will make understanding that lasts long in the mind of students, especially when they come to an Asian restaurant later. Some students even can try to make some rice papers for a great experience.

The main part of Vietnam school tours Cuchi Tunnel is the tunnel of course. We enter the site of the tunnel and watch a short document movie about life at tunnel long time ago. A miniature and a map are also available for the project leader to have some brief introduction about the Cuchi tunnel place.

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We walk around a while to see the tunnel history from outside. We see entrances with special camouflages; we see air ventilation systems; we see bunkers; we see shocked bamboo traps for guerrilla techniques; we see tanks on the ground which have been damaged and stopped there since then. That’s a thorough introduction of the tunnel.

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We come to another section of the trip by get into the tunnel and start crawling like a Cuchi man long time ago. You might be afraid of little space, of darkness, or unwanted dangers from the tunnel. However, its is a special experience that you can’t not find it out where else.

The more you crawl, the tunnel get smaller. You can crawl from meeting room to living room, further to under ground hospital or even to a hidden kitchen. Getting to know the special techniques for surgery at the war time is also amazing. Futher crawling can lead to some bottle neck that is design for Vietnamese bodies only. It’s small but it’s a very unique experience when we should crawl by our belly.

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Getting out of the fear in the small tunnel, we can visit the outside of the kitchen and understand how they hide smokes at cooking. What amazing ideas to survive. We sit down and enjoy some typical food of Cuchi men long time ago.

We make some pictures of the Cuchi man display before getting to the bus. What a knowledgeable day!

Vietnam School Tours Saigon City – Value of educational travel

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Our Student trips to Vietnam are not only for community service projects. They also come for experiencing the culture, the history and the life exposure of Vietnamese people. Join our Vietnam School Tours Saigon City visit. You will see why we are proud that every experience at Green Summers contains educational value to our young students.

The trip of Saigon city tour lasts one day. Our Vietnam School Tours Saigon City also visits the highlight of the city like Opera House, Hotel de Ville, Central Post Office, Saigon Notre Dame, Reunification Palace, some temples and markets. What is more, we make some walking to back roads of the city where the poor people live their real life.

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Have a look at this picture and see how students can feel how lucky they are at their life. We have visited a local house where many families at a quarter do the job at a family glass factory. They cook the broken glass to liquid and use a long tube to blow air and make jars or vases. The heat in a tropical country plus the heat from the oven makes the factory so hot. The local people should work there around 10 hours per day in that hot and dangerous environment six days per week. However, they are still of happy faces when we arrive.

The walking into the small alleys at our Vietnam School Tours Saigon City is not just a destination. We visit many houses with different interesting things to see, but transferring the same message that some places in this world people should work very hard, and that does not mean they are less happy.

You can see at another house like the picture below. Some ladies are not strong enough to work in a hot room of glass factory can do other things here. We walk further 4 house blocks and visit this lady.

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Walking further at the alleys we also see houses making incense sticks. We also see this man of rental delivery. He is there to carry any things needed by the local here like glass, incense sticks, tables, etc. He just stay there under the heat and wait for the opportunity. What a boring job! Nevertheless, he’s still a happy man.

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Our Vietnam School Tours Saigon City also arrive an orphanage where they care the children abandoned, handicapped, of no parents, or of victim of Agent Orange. The children there need not only food but love as well. We come, we play with them, we hug them, we feed them. We bring them extra care and love. We also donate some finance for the center to feed them. However, the time we spent for them is the most counted.

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In between the trips we have lunch at a local restaurant where we enjoy the best and the most typical food of Vietnam: Pho. We can have choices of beef, chicken and even vegetables.

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The Vietnam School Tours Saigon City has been run in a bit different way but is necessary to deliver messages to students about values of life. We believe that it’s the best way to run school tours for students.

 

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You should come and experience the special beauties of Vietnam, see different lives, and run community service projects by our Vietnam School Tours. Let’s have a look at how you will enjoy this trip with so that many values.

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Special beauties of Vietnam at Vietnam school tours

What will your see at your Vietnam school tours? Firstly that should be Hanoi as a distinctive Oriental culture city with special daily life, architecture and the famed Old Quarter. Taking a rickshaw ride along tiny streets of the Old Quarter should make real touch to this lovely city. Having dinner with the fish dish listed by Anthony Bourdain as the ten world best dish to eat in life is another impressive experience.

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Secondly that should be Halong with amazing cruise in the middle of isles. Do it and imagine you are in the movie King Kong Skull Island which is made here. The sleeping over night on a junk with your private room or trekking thru national forest on the biggest island should make special pages in your diary.

Thirdly that should be Sapa where you make trekking across villages of hill tribal people with different clothes, culture and languages. Indulging yourself into the amazing landscape of vast terraced rice fields of getting lost among a weekly market meeting of hill tribes will burn your camera as you will use it so much.

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Fourthly the place should be Hoian where students get touch to a live museum of lifestyle since 16th century, enjoying peace as well as cycling around to see traditional jobs of local people that have been existed for thousand years.

Fifthly visiting Hue and students can see architecture of ancient Vietnam Kingdom with its Oriental culture and science. Discovering the poor life of families living on the boats, or playing with children at some communities along the cycling routes to the countryside are the great memory of life.

Sixthly that is exploring Saigon with all its two fold beauties: the colonial corner with great building versus poor alleys with slum dog houses, the bustling markets versus the easy going of Saigonese, the peaceful streets versus the fierce pages of the history at the museums. The trip to Cuchi tunnel also a great opportunity to learn another angle of world history.

Last but not least, it’s Mekong delta where your Vietnam school tours should have boat trips along mazes of canals across tropical fruit gardens. Students can make cycling along small trails in the middle of vast rice farms and see local people working on the farms. And, never skip the floating markets where thousands of boats gathering on the water to merchandise one another.

Witnessing different lives at Vietnam school tours

Along our Vietnam school tours we often have some visit that either benefits the local people or students or both.

That can be a visit to an orphanage where handicapped children are brought up. Students can splay with children to bring love and care to them. That also can be a walking into special alleys of Saigon and witness the local people working very hard 60 hours per week. And they are still very happy people. Students also can have trips to local houses with special jobs like coconut jobs, rice paper making or pop rice making. The more experience can be a visit to rice farms, to gardens or to markets. These are just to show how some people works very hard and they are still happy people.

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Community service projects at Vietnam school tours

The community service projects are not always included in our Vietnam school tours. However, they are the special ones and best ones for students to gain special values for their maturity. The students will have 5 days staying at a homestay. They will eat local food. They wash their own clothes. They learn how to cook. They play games with local children. And especially they participate in building a work that benefits a community. Thru the community service project, they learn the value of adaptability, of communication, of no fear in a strange place, and of sharing their hands to help real poor people at a third world country.

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And of course the local people welcome them because community service projects will make their life a sustainable development. Then the Vietnam school tours is not just for entertainment only, but also for educational purposes.

These should be the great trips of your school life that will help to change you to a new person of maturity.

See some of ours community service projects we are organizing now.

Story of Tou and her vulnerable future

Help Tou and her classmates at a kinder garten to have a toilet for their daily life

Comunity Service Project House – Building for Poor Families

Build a house for a poor family to change their life and lives of their children

Community Service Project Book – Setting reading behavior

Help instill a love of reading by creating a library in a school

Community Service Project in renovating a school

Repair class rooms for a school with old walls, damaged floor and leaking roof

Community Service Project Road – Building a cement road

Build a cement road around 200m long across a poor community that has no resources

Community service project in building a toilet

Build a restroom for 250 elementary school students and teachers

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