Guidebook Join the watery fun at the Cai Rang floating market
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Join the watery fun at the Cai Rang floating market

This floating market has existed for over 100 years, notes Christina’s blog. Located 6km from the centre of Can Tho, the Cai Rang floating market makes you “stare in awe when you see the smooth performances of traders juggling fruits boat to boat.” There are “all sorts of colorful vessels with fruits and vegetables stacked two or three feet high,” writes The Culture Trip. Other boats sell cooked food or coffee, and some are actually people’s homes -- “with a kitchen at the back, or clutters of washed clothes and laundry hanging out to dry.”

The market stretches half kilometre downstream from Cai Rang Bridge, writes Buffalo Trip. Hundreds of boats gather “from the dawn till before noon,” as large-sized anchored boats “create meandering lanes for smaller ones to weave through.” Most of them are packed with farm products and specialties of nearby towns and regions. And because the “cries of the sellers seem to be swallowed in the vastness of the river and lost into the noise of boat engines,” explains Buffalo Trip, vendors use a “unique advertising tool” -- every boat has a long upright pole with samples of the goods for sale hung on, “so the sellers do not have to cry out what they are selling and buyers can easily see from the distance the goods sold on that boat.” The floating market is open every day from 5am until 11am, with the peak being “the 8 o'clock rush hour.”

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