The Markets of Vietnam

Every town and city in Vietnam has a market.  I thought I would just give a sampling of some of the markets we visited, they are all pretty much the same, lots of food, clothing, shoes, purses, bags, etc, etc, etc.

This was another market in Saigon

Lots of knockoffs!  It was so crowded you really couldn’t see anything.

You could barely get through the aisles, if you suffer from claustrophobia this would not be the place for you.

They have these huge piles of food and you have to wonder can they sell all of this in a week, or is a lot of the food quite old or can it sit there for months, we tried to talk to some of the ladies but they had absolutely no English, so they would just laugh and chatter away in Vietnamese.

They seem to spend a lot of time making their food look very appealing, these dried mushrooms had to take a long time to put into the bags, all facing out the same way.

These dried fruits and nuts were selling fast.

The market in Hue was quite interesting - the second floor was used for goods as well as an eating and resting, they had hammocks to rest or maybe they slept there, again no one could speak enough English to ask them.

Lots of soup bowls.

The market only had cloth to keep out the sun – every night the first floor hawkers pack their goods into large garbage bags and take all of their goods home or somewhere.

Here is a shot from the second floor, you can see the concrete buildings on either side, this is where the indoor market was, I’m sure they pay a premium for these spots.

We watched them starting to dismantle their piles of purses; it didn’t take them long to stuff the bags and purses into large duffle bags or garbage bags, they wheel them out on small carts to trucks and off they go, some had piles of stuff on their bikes.  Can you imagine doing this seven days a week?  We watched them in the Saigon market as well; their biggest challenge was to get the carts down those narrow aisles.

Dinner

They did have some bags that caught my eye.

Always great looking fruits.