Long wooden boats, which are filled with fresh exotic fruits and vegetables, freshly caught fish, fragrant flowers, and medicinal potions; smiling tanned traders, who offer not only goods but also services: making a fashionable haircut, styling, hemming your pants, or sewing a hole in your clothes... This is just one of the most unusual attractions of Can Tho and the whole of Vietnam – the Cai Rang Floating Market.
Locals start stuffing boats with food and preparing shears for haircuts before dawn. And at 6 am huge strings are already moored off the banks of the Cai Rang River. As soon as the first tourists come, movement on the river starts. Day by day caravans of boats float along it.
Around one hundred years ago, the first boat traders sold food and necessities to locals. This system was recognized as very convenient because a trader was able to see what the goods in a boat are from afar. After many years, land trade developing by leaps and bounds could not overtake the floating market in popularity. Today, Cai Rang is an economical, touristic and cultural center of the city. Moreover, it is a very colorful place! From one side, there are the Vietnamese, wearing traditional straw hats and loudly offering their goods. From another – there are tourists of all the races and types, with surprised eyes trying to decide what to buy. And finally – the goods themselves. It seems that there is everything in this place: durian, rambutans, mangosteen, more familiar grapefruits, small watermelons, dried fish, «fragrant» fish sauce, coconut candies.
It is better to go to the market during the earliest hours to avoid crowds of tourists and buy everything fresh and with a discount.
Even if you are not going to buy anything, it is worth visiting the Cai Rang Floating Market.