At my local market in the late afternoons, the vendors clear out. Meat and produce sellers alike vacate the stalls they rent in the market building and cart their stock to the side of the narrow road on which the market is situated.
It's a monotonous and painstaking process. Perfectly displayed merchandise, having served the pre-lunch shoppers well, is packed carefully into baskets, styrofoam boxes and all manner of containers and hauled fifty metres or so, where it is again artfully organised to attract the consumer eye. In the current heat, this mad daily operation zaps the energy and patience of these small business operators. They are curt to even the most polite bargaining.
They make this move because their customers no longer want to stop, park their motorbikes and walk into the market stalls, preferring instead to do a drive through pit stop shop. A few years ago, one vendor set up a small satellite sample of produce from her main stall and started garnering large handfuls of dong from the evening traffic. Others followed suit and now, the actual market is a dark empty cave at five o'clock while the road outside is gridlocked with motorbikes spewing fumes, sweaty butchers weilding cleavers and forthright shoppers poking and pointing.
Amongst a smorgasboard of the essential flavours of Vietnam.
The market looks like some fresh market in Thailand. Some of the Thai market is on the rail road and when train come, the merchants moves there stuffs very quickly. It is very impressive.
Anyway, Thank you so much for sharing.
-Green
www.ahacook.com
Posted by: Green | 30 May 2009 at 08:58 PM
Yes, this kind of knee jerk reaction happens all over Hanoi, too...when the police come, vendors run in all directions and five minutes later, it's all back to normal.
Posted by: Sticky | 03 June 2009 at 10:46 PM