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Vietnam floating market struggles to stay above water

2018-06-20T03:48:27Z

ShawnTruchanas3:

A vendor prepares vegetables that she sold to a resident of a house boat in a canal off the Song Hau river in the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city of the Mekong Delta 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 [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] 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. A resident of a house boat yawns as he swings on a hammock on the vessel in a canal off the Song Hau river at the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city in the Mekong Delta 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 has rapidly developed over the last decade. Industrial and construction sectors have created nearly 570,000 jobs, hauling many from [http://Search.Ft.com/search?queryText=poverty poverty]. But people like Ut have been left behind, unable to afford a [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] life on shore. Even vendors making a decent wage from the tourists who flock to the market yearn for the perks of living on land: better housing, better jobs and modern amenities. Nguyen Thi Hong Tuoi started working on the water when she was a child, just like her mother and grandmother before her. Though she earns decent money, she doesn't expect her daughter to carry on the family tradition. Boats lie anchored in a canal off the Song Hau river in the floating Cai Rang market in Can Tho, a small city of the Mekong Delta "In the future, I will let my daughter live on land so she can study and have a proper job," the 34-year-old told AFP, as her elderly mother rested in a hammock surrounded by sacks of tapioca on their boat. It's a common aspiration for young people in Vietnam, where more than half the country's 93 million people are under the age of 30 and eager to move to fast-growing cities for work. - Supermarket squeeze - The origins of Cai Rang market reach back to when Vietnam and neighbouring Cambodia and Laos were occupied by the French, who readily exploited the natural resources of the colony previously called Indochina. The Mekong Delta's [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] web of canals -- both natural and man-made -- were used to transport goods and people in the absence of a reliable road network. Kim Hui, 70, and her five-year-old granddaughter Nguyen Thi Ngoc Huyen sit inside a boat that they call home in a canal off the Song Hau river at the floating Cai [http://realitysandwich.com/?s=Rang%20market Rang market] in Can Tho, a small city in the Mekong Delta There are about a dozen surviving markets in Vietnam's Mekong Delta today, though like Cai Rang, many have shrivelled. "The local government is trying to keep the floating markets alive to (preserve) the culture and attract more tourists," said Nguyen Thi Huynh Phuong, a lecturer at nearby Can Tho University who has researched the market's history. It still functions as a wholesale market, with vendors waking each day before dawn to load boats with watermelons or radishes and advertising their products by spearing them to a bamboo pole on the bow of the ship. But its charm also draws millions of visitors each year who buy noodles, fruit and coffee from water traders, making it a well-established pit-stop on the Mekong tourist trail. Recognising the market as a tourism hotspot, the government designated Cai Rang as a national heritage site last year. For vendors like Ly Hung, who has lived on the water for 26 years, visitors have helped to maintain a traditional way of life. "Without tourism this floating market would disappear," he said. Advertisement

40 years ago young Thai protesters massacred

2018-06-19T06:13:53Z

ShawnTruchanas3:

BANGKOK (AP) - EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press Photographer Neal Ulevich won the Pulitzer Prize for his photos of the suppression of a left-wing student protest at Bangkok's Thammasat University on Oct. 6, 1976, and the brutal lynchings in its wake. Ulevich, then 30, arrived as a night of tension at the campus broke into a full-scale assault by paramilitary police on thousands of trapped and defenseless students. Even with experience covering the [http://Www.Hometalk.com/search/posts?filter=Vietnam Vietnam] War- he was on one of the last helicopters out when the American presence ended with the communist takeover in April 1975 - Ulevich was stunned by the scale of the violence. After winning the Pulitzer, he said his happiness "must be tempered with grim memories of the day. If there is any value in the pictures it is that they may have made some people pause and think about the wider issues such as hatred and violence." FILE - In this Oct. [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội] 6, 1976 file photo blood streaming down his face, a leftist student, center, wounded and captured by police is helped to an ambulance at the Thammasat University campus in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich,File) Ulevich wrote this first-person account, which the AP published soon after the massacre. ___ In a real riot no one knows you're there. So as gunfire crackled over the campus of Bangkok's Thammasat University Wednesday morning, I pushed my way through an angry sea of rightists and found a hole in the high metal fence surrounding the campus. I paused momentarily while Boy Scouts pushed through the fence the body of a soldier with a chest wound. I jumped through. The police were on the attack and the rightists were cheering their support. Troops armed with M-16 rifles were spraying wild fire across a quadrangle, shattering classroom windows and nicking holes in the walls. With some Indochina combat coverage behind me, I could hear that more than 90 percent of the fire was going in one direction - toward the students. Occasionally it seemed a round came back. On the quadrangle, troopers worked their way toward classrooms. Some of the troopers tossed hand grenades through the windows. The "garrumph" of a grenade going off was followed by a puff of smoke and the tinkle of showering glass. Then the recoilless rifle crew moved up. It wasn't immediately clear why the border patrol police were there, or why they thought they needed an armor-piercing antitank weapon to conquer students. The two-man crew moved forward, followed by a shaggy right-winger carrying a box of ammunition. They blasted more classrooms. A few minutes later, about 9:30 a.m., the battle seemed over. Students began to pour out of campus buildings, some wounded. I began to move forward, 50 yards behind the soldiers. I began to feel apprehensive, just as I did in Vietnam when crossing open ground. And with good reason. The shooting began again. The students threw themselves to the ground - I did, too - as the Thai police emptied more thousands of rounds into the classrooms. The fire slackened and the students got up. I reached the nearest classroom building. At the door, students were running out, diving to their hands and knees and crawling past soldiers who told them to take off their shirts, and coeds their blouses. Slow performance earned a kick. A grenade went off in a classroom above us, showering troops and their captives with glass and plaster. The students crawled toward the center of the quadrangle to lie in the hot sun. I was joined by a German reporter who speaks Thai, and we walked out through the gate. Then we were out on the street - close by the pleasant green trees that surround the Pramaine Ground site of Bangkok's colorful weekend fair. But then we saw the angry swarm of Thais around two of those trees and their anger was white hot. I saw the body of a dead student hanging from one tree. The scene was being repeated just a few feet away. I don't know how much earlier the students had been lynched - probably just a few minutes - but enraged rightists felt robbed by death and continued to batter the bodies. Other Thais who witnessed the 1973 student riots here said the earlier uprising, which left 70 dead, never evoked the brutality or hatred of Wednesday's attack on the students. No one had seen me. I had wandered throughout and taken pictures unmolested. But I had seen enough, and left. FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo a member of a Thai political faction strikes at the lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University in Bangkok Oct. 6, 1976. For some Thais, the bloody events of [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo, police stand guard over leftist Thai students on a soccer field at Thammasat University, in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Gary Mangkorn, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo leftist students who surrendered to police lie on the ground of the soccer field at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand, awaiting orders from their captors. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct 6, 1976 file photo a policeman kicks a leftist student who surrendered moments before as police moved in on Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976, file photo, police fire a shell as they storm the walls of Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976, are still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) FILE - In this Oct. 6, 1976 file photo a member of a Thai political faction strikes at the lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University in Bangkok Oct. 6, 1976. For some Thais, the bloody events of October 6, 1976 are [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] still a nightmare. On that day, heavily armed security forces shot up Bangkok's Thammasat University campus and killed scores of students, while right-wing vigilantes captured would-be escapees, subjecting them to ghoulish lynchings. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, File) Advertisement

User:ShawnTruchanas3

2018-06-19T06:13:44Z

ShawnTruchanas3: Created page with "Hello, I'm Shawn, a 30 year old from Regency Park Bc, Australia. My hobbies include (but are not limited to) College football, Art collecting and watching The Vampire Diari..."

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