January 2, 2011I was fascinated by the phenomenon of what I'll call the "Grocery Boat" in Halong Bay. The tourist boat industry led to the creation of these Grocery Boats, since elaborate, huge meals are served on the tourist boats. With typical Vietnamese ingenuity and opportunism, the hard-working Vietnamese women jumped on the niche of delivering food to chefs on these tourist boats.
This female economy involved the women rowing hard around the bay, going from tourist boat to boat hawking their groceries. They'd ride right up to the back of the tourist boat and yell into the kitchen which has a door at the back base of the boat, right next to the water. You can hear them hollering their wares then loudly negotiating a hard-won price with the male chef on board each tourist boat.
All the while, many of them have their children with them. They do child care and work at the same time.
You might ask, "Where do they live this far out on the bay?" God knows, they're not zipping deep into the bay each morning on a high-speed motorboat, to go to work. No, they actually have floating villages in the bay too. Right next to the over-boat-touristed Sung Sot cave lies a floating village with little sidewalks that connect each floating house to the other. I tried to picture my kids running from floating house to house to play with the other kids every day, living as a floating villager.
Click here for a video of the grocery boat, with a brief glimpse of the floating village in the background.
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