The main Mèo Vạc Market Hall has a large cafe at its heart
The
last page
showed people who chose to trade in the streets of Mèo Vạc, but the town also has a large dedicated market hall complete with a busy cafe and, adjacent to it, a penned area for cattle. As it rains heavily and frequently in Vietnam the protection offered by the hall is for many worth the money they pay for a space inside.
Large vats, on open fires, hold basic foods:
stocks and rice
Commonly in Vietnam a plate of rice is served by the staff and then customers help themselves to the dishes of meat, fish and vegetables. The assemblage is then shown to the cashier who tots up a price - any shock is absorbed with traditional oriental calm
Woks do need to be large, but these seem a touch exaggerated
The red caddy on the table is ubiquitous in Vietnam, it holds chopsticks, spoons and toothpicks
Having bought one of the huge woks getting it home may hone navigational skills
The logs burn at one end as they are pushed into the fire under the pots - and the smoke is ignored
Choosing from a range of billhooks
This building also operates at night. Such markets are common in all tropical countries, 'night' comes by 7 pm, and the heat of the day is normally less debilitating by that time
The noodle section of the market
Noodles are mostly made from rice and
manioc.
In fact manioc, although now ubiquitous in Asia, is a relatively modern introduction from South America where it is known as cassava
Beside the hall is the cattle area. Some of our company can be seen preferring to expose only their heads to the potential maulings of these wild animals
While this is mainly a cattle market, no market (or even page) is complete without its goat - this one is heavily pregnant
Cattle in Vietnam are by our standards remarkably docile
Bull's eye. These are Vietnamese
golden/yellow cattle
Golden cattle, also common in India, have short horns, humps on their necks and flaps of skin below their throats
Some more shots of bulls with their guardians...
A missing foot, hope it does not contradict my comment on docility
While the language and looks may differ, there is something very reassuringly familiar about the stances and interactions of people across the world, from this remote corner of Vietnam to the
lowlands of Scotland
The next page
takes you on a road out of Mèo Vạc which has only recently been made available to cars. In the past it was motorbikes only - as you will see.
The last page had pictures of street traders in Mèo Vạc
Go to a page on a kilometre long night market in Hà Nội
More on cattle in the Vietnamese countryside
