Mekong Floating Market

Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Thu 28 Dec 2017 23:27
Mekong Floating Market
 
 
 
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We left our digs, walked to the tourist ferry dock, joined a boat and spent half an hour spuddling up river to the famous Mekong Floating Market. This huge market has happened here on a daily basis for the last hundred years or so. Commercial buying for restaurants and hotels tends to happen in the very early hours, general shopping after breakfast and tourists throughout the day. We did by-pass up and own, zig-zagged through and then climbed aboard a big restaurant (with very tacky bead ornaments for sale as well as more ‘general store’ stuff) to get a view from higher up. We thoroughly enjoyed watching a the workers in a cabbage shed on the shore. Wielding sharp cleavers three or four men stripped the outside leaves with a single slash and tossed the ‘cleaned’ vegetable to waiting hands who loaded them in their holds for delivery. Ladies with massive knives set about watermelons for the tourists and we watched men cutting pretty patterns as they peeled pineapples. Some workers were resting, eating breakfast, chatting (shouting) at their neighbours. Carpets of lotus flowers came down river and caught around ropes tied to navigation buoys holding rafts of boats in place. Huge ships loaded with sand wiggled through at one side and empty ships looked odd as they were at normal height out of the water. A real melee to watch and enjoy for an hour or so.
 
 
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ALL IN ALL A MUST-SEE MARKET, A MUST-DO EXPERIENCE
                     NEVER SEEN SUCH QUANTITY MOVING ABOUT