Floating Market, Rice Noodle Production

During our first two days in the Mekong Delta we stayed in Cần Thơ, the capital of the region.  It was a bustling city, home to around 1.4 million people.   Before the French arrived,  people in Cần Thơ used boats to move around the city.  The French added a road system, which has since been expanded on, but still floods almost every day during the rainy season.  Even during days it does not rain, at high tide the river water seeps under the city and floods the roads and sidewalks.  

On September 18, my class woke up at 6:00 a.m. to go to a floating market.  We all piled into a long wooden motor boat with a canopy and drove off in the muddy canal water.  The market in Cần Thơ starts very early and closes before 8:30 a.m.  Multiple boats were brimming with pineapple, jicamas, potatoes, and squash.  Some boats had long poles in the front with a skewered fruit or vegetable advertising what they were selling.  The people on the boats were busy cutting fruits or throwing squash boat to boat, but I was not sure if the people they were passing the produce to were buying it or taking it somewhere else to sell.  There were at least three other boats filled with tourists floating around the same market.  These floating markets are all over Vietnam so I hope we will get to see another.

After the market, the boat took us to a woman’s home where she manages a rice noodle business.  Behind her house were two sheds where all the machines and stoves were kept.  In the first room, the rice was soaked in water and mashed through a press to make a very smooth milky white mixture.  This mixture was carried into the next building, which felt like a sauna.  In the hot room, there were two women who each managed two stove tops.  Each stove top was a big circular disk (about a foot and a half in diameter), which was heated by burning the golden rice husks, which cover the rice when it’s growing.  This way they do not have to buy wood and they use every part of the rice so there is minimal waste.  The women poured the white rice mixture onto one of the circular heated disks and quickly spread it out evenly, which the back of their ladle (the back of the ladle was flat).   They covered the rice circle with a lid and moved a few inches to reach the other circular stove.  They would remove the lid from that stove top and a finished rice paper circle would be underneath.  A man at each station had a type of woven bamboo bat, which he used to pick up the rice paper.  The rice paper was placed onto a large woven mat.  Once four were on a mat, another mat was added on top.  After four of these mats were stacked, another worker would carry them outside to lay in the sun.

Adding rice husks to the fire underneath the stove to keep it hot.

Pouring the rice mixture on the stove.

Spreading the rice mixture on the stove.

Picking up the rice paper off the stove with a woven bat.

Laying the steaming hot rice paper on the mat to dry.

Carrying the sheets of rice paper outside.

The rice paper is laid outside to dry for a few hours.

 After the paper dries, it is stacked and shredded by a machine into thin noodles.

 

 This rice noodle business employs seven workers.  The workers are provided with housing right behind the building with the stoves. They work about eight hours per day, seven days a week.  Each day, they produce about 700 kilos of rice noodles, which sell for 20,000 dong per kilo or $1 per kilo.