Vietnam’s famed floating market struggles to stay above water
CAN THO: Fixing weighing scales used to be good business on Vietnam’s floating Cai Rang market, but the last repairman on the river now makes just a few dollars a month as modernity pushes traders to land.
Surrounded by dusty old scales on his cluttered houseboat, Nguyen Van Ut says vendors are giving up their boats for better lives on terra firma where supermarkets draw the traders who once thronged the waterway. “I don’t have many customers now. In the past, it was alright, but now many boats have left the floating market... people on vessels have switched to vehicles,” the 71-year-old told AFP.
He got into the repairs business 30 years ago on the Can Tho river to support his surviving children after his wife and two of his sons drowned in an accident. For a time life was good, but now he relies on handouts from his children -- three of them work in nearby Can Tho city. Once reportedly two kilometres long, the Cai Rang market is a shadow of its former self. There are about 300 boats on the water now, down from 550 in 2005, according to the local tourism office.
It has fallen victim to the economic rise of the Mekong Delta, which rapidly developed over the last decade. Industrial and construction sectors have created nearly 570,000 jobs, hauling many from poverty.
But people like Ut have been left behind, unable to afford a life on shore.