We are riding on a wooden boat with a relatively quiet motor. The mild breeze kicking up from the river and the boat’s gentle rocking are restful. We just finished drinking cocoanut milk through straws punched into coconuts with the tops lopped off. Our boat has just pulled away from the landing in Ben Tre, Vietnam. We have completed the last leg of a long scavenge that required us to leave the hotel at 5:00 this morning. We took a taxi ride of 3.5 hours to Can Tho to see the Cai Rang morning floating market.
Our driver spoke zero English and relied sporadically (but not quite often enough in our opinions) on calling someone on his cell phone for directions. We almost didn’t get to the market on time because he waited a long time stuck going the wrong way in a torrent of oncoming moped traffic. With the aid of his life line, he managed to find the unobvious parking lot for access to the river boat.
We boarded the wooden river boat just before 8:30 and merged into the busy waterway. Farmers sell produce to buyers who float up alongside them. We saw watermelons being handed out from little windows in the hull and pineapples being tossed in the air from one vessel to another.
A boat selling produce is recognizable by the stick rising into the air from its bow. The pole is a sign of what’s for sale. The farmer ties a sample on and dangles it in the air for visibility, sort of like a billboard. Sometimes with items like tomatoes, they are suspended in a small net sack. As we wove our way among the sellers’ boats, watermelons, pumpkins, onions, carrots, turnips and tomatoes swayed above the crowd of boats.
The boats are primitive, some appearing to be handmade, with motors cobbled together.
Some farmers live on their boats with their families. We saw hammocks; sometimes with little kids playing in them. An old woman squatted over a large pot, wringing clothes she lifted from the green river water.
We watched all of this through the morning sun sparkling on the water.
Some farmers live on their boats with their families. We saw hammocks; sometimes with little kids playing in them. An old woman squatted over a large pot, wringing clothes she lifted from the green river water.
We watched all of this through the morning sun sparkling on the water.
It was a good thing we arrived before 9:00, because the boats started to pull away at once, like a signal had been given that it was time to go. I was so grateful we got there in time to have had this extraordinary experience.