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| VIETNAMESE CAR SEAT |
The Last Vestiges of Vietnam’s Villages
Our days on the ship are almost over. But yesterday and today provided many opportunities to visit small remote villages and although we are tourists strolling through, and perhaps gawking a bit, it does not feel like anyone is putting on a show for us.
We travel from the ship onto a local sampan and head to an island, where we gingerly step onto what passes as a dock- usually a piece of old wood. We visit the sleeping mat factory, which, in actuality, is no more than an assembly line across different villager’s front patios. The first house is a husband and wife who have a loom made of simply two bamboo poles strung with jute. The fisherman husband is home today so he perches in a DEEP squat atop a very wide low stool placed under the loom. His wife quickly wraps a reed around a pointed stick and in one second weaves it through the loom warp.
Marci helping make the mats
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As she is pulling it out, he is tying the ends. They make two narrow mats on the single loom before cutting the reeds off the sides. The half finished mats are then sold to the mat finishers. Two women two houses down sit and ‘crochet’ the mat ends to finish it. Later they are sold to the man with the motorbike, folded in pairs and stacked on his bike which hops onto the ferry to head to the Mainland. In one day, these three families make maybe $3 per family and produce 30 mats.
Next to the mat makers are two women with large bags of what looks like rags. They are the scraps of fabric leftover from factories that make clothes. One woman lays out the scraps and cuts them in the best lengths she can. Then she cuts a hole near one end. Next, the other woman hooks the lengths of rags together to make a long chain. Once the chains are made, they will move onto another entrepreneur in the village who will weave, what else, rag rugs out of these scraps. For these villagers, nothing is wasted. In fact, in Cambodia and Vietnam, where there are plenty of bugs and mosquitos, and therefore plenty of cans of bug spray, old aerosol Raid cans are collected, bundled and sold to be used to float a fishing net!
These forays are hot and sweaty. They are no place to have to use the ‘happy house’, the Cambodian phrase for toilet. But the people seem happy. The children are a collage of beautiful faces, smiling and waving at us. We walk by 25 three year olds at pre-school, sitting outside having their lunch of rice and veggies, and they wave - not because they expect anything from us. But we are different and according to our wonderful guide, Tri (Tree) they covet our light skin and our pointed noses. Little do they know how much we spend to be tan and make our noses smaller! I do know they sometimes spend $1,500.00 USD to make their noses more pointed, a fortune to a family that probably earns $250-350 a month.
We have a last village stop this afternoon and a farewell dinner this evening. Our co-passengers have been lovely to share a table and much wine. Not a boisterous crowd but genuinely nice people. After today, we will jump headfirst into much more developed cities with thousands of tourists. We will hopefully sip Vietnamese coffee at a sidewalk cafe and have a few Bahn Mi. We will trade photos with our cruise friends and have very fond memories of the Mekong Delta.
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| My new friend, who had his eye intentionally blinded, by a doctor, with a pin, so as to not be able to serve in the South Vietnamese Army.....this got him 3 years in prison. |
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| This is how we negotiate in the market when you have no paper.....He wants 18,000 VND....... |
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