Introduction

Hi guys,

Nice to meet you all. I am Sylvia, student of the Bachelor International Land and Water Management and 21 years old. It’s almost time to go on my first journey. Within three weeks, I will be flying to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), an eight million metropolis that has been ruled by many empires. But that’s not why it fascinates me. HCMC is located next to the Mekong delta. The Mekong River is one of the longest rivers in the world flowing from the high plains of Tibet through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and it enters Vietnam through two mean rivers: the Bassac and Mekong.

The coming months, I will be joining a research team of the National University of Vietnam to do a livelihood study on agricultural diversification and transformation in the agricultural sector. At the same time, I am going to look at salt-water intrusion, which is a big problem. The Mekong delta is like the Rhine-Meuse and Scheldt delta in the Netherlands where the land subsides while the sea level rises. I am curious what I will discover and am looking forward to my internship and thesis research.

For now, I am preparing for my trip and my adventure is about to start. This week I got my first backpack as a WURldexplorer. Follow me on Instagram and share this experience with me. Write to you soon.

Kind regards,

Sylvia