Mekong Floating Market
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Thu 28 Dec 2017 23:27
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Mekong Floating
Market
 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.
                              ALL IN ALL A MUST-SEE MARKET,
A MUST-DO EXPERIENCE
NEVER SEEN SUCH QUANTITY MOVING
ABOUT
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