Floating Market in the Mekong Delta

Long Xuyên is a city of some 400,000 people located on the banks of the Hau River (Sông Hậu). The Hau is part of the massive Mekong River delta system of rivers. Long Xuyen is 140km upriver from the coast where the Mekong and its tributaries spill into the East Sea. Even at that distance from the sea, the Hau River is not a small river on its own, but the delta’s main channel, the Mekong River itself, is still larger as it flows by about 20km to the north and east of Long Xuyen.

Long Xuyen is home to a floating market where sellers of local fruits and vegetables meet with buyers on boats in the middle of the Hau River. The man standing on top of the larger boat in the photo above is weighing large bunches of bananas to sell to the man in the smaller boat. He will transport the bananas he buys to the Long Xuyen shore of the river where the bananas will be cut into smaller bunches and be sold to retail buyers in a local wet market.

The floating market opens early and continues to 10 or so in the morning seven days a week. When my brother visited Vietnam in 2018, we made a brief stop in Long Xuyen and took a boat tour through the market. There were a number of boats on the river, though the market area was hardly crowded. We arrived at about 7:30 am on a Sunday morning, and it is very possible Sunday is a slow day.

The friendly young woman in the foreground of the photo below is going from boat to boat in the market selling bowls of noodle soup for breakfast to customers and sellers.

The woman in the next image is making her way to the market area with a selection of drinks for sale.

Hoa My Hung Island sits in the middle of the Hau River, dividing the river into two narrow channels that come together just as the river flows past Long Xuyen. Houses on stilts stand in the water near the river banks. Some households are engaged in fishing, and in addition to having flat bottom fishing boats, some river dwellers use ingenious arrangements of nets deployed below the house to catch or, in some cases, farm fish. Trapdoors in the porches of the houses make both the nets and the catch accessible. I assume most of the people living in these homes depend on the river in one way or another for their livelihoods. Other families may be involved in growing fruits and vegetables on Hoa My Hung Island.

Some houses have satellite dishes providing residents with television and, I presume, internet service.

In the picture below, a family is out fishing. It is Sunday morning so it makes sense that the boy is helping his mom and dad on the weekend. But let’s hope he is able to go to school come Monday morning.

Floating Market, Chau Doc, Vietnam

Châu Đốc is a Vietnamese city sitting on the country’s border with Cambodia. The Hau River (Sông Hậu), part of the massive Mekong Delta system of rivers, flows through Châu Đốc. Every morning a floating market is busy in the center of the river. People from the northern side of the river bring their fruits and vegetables to the market for buyers from the south side who take their wholesale purchases back to markets in the city.

Xeo Quit Jungle, Mekong Delta

During the Vietnam War, Xẻo Quít was a jungle base and command post for Viet Cong troops in the Mekong Delta area. It is about 100 km southwest of Saigon, and while it was shelled and bombed, the area was never attacked by South Vietnamese or US ground forces. Today, much of what was jungle in the Mekong Delta area in the 1960s has been cleared to make way for agriculture and urban expansion as Vietnam’s economy develops rapidly. But the Xẻo Quít area, itself, has been preserved and is now a national park where visitors can take a boat ride through the old base or walk on jungle trails. The park was crowded with Vietnamese tourists, many of them students on school excursions, the day I visited.

Whenever I see Vietnamese landscapes of this kind, I am reminded of how downright stupid the United States was to become involved in Vietnam’s complex war, a war of national liberation and a civil war mixed together in ways next to impossible to unravel. Our delusional and ugly hubris rained horrible destruction on this country and its people, enormously magnifying the damage the Vietnamese would have done if left to settle their differences on their own. I remain thankful I was not called to serve in the US military. I was a pretty flakey 20 year old in 1969, and I cannot imagine how I would have coped with being made a soldier and packed off to Vietnam to fight. In fact at the beginning of 1970, the military had sent me a notice to report for a pre-conscription physical exam – I was scheduled to be drafted – but in the end I was spared having to serve by the draft lottery that took place at the end of 1969. My birth date drew a high number and I received a second notice telling me I did not need to report for a physical. Luck of the draw. It was the last I ever heard from the US armed forces.

Riverside Market, Mekong Delta

The loading dock pictured here serves a riverside market in the small city of Cái Bè, which is about 100 km to the southwest of Saigon and 85 km from where the Mekong spills into the East Sea. Fruits and vegetables are grown on one side of the river and ferried to urban markets on the other side. These workers are handling large baskets of rambutan fruit.