Cai Rang Floating Market

At four in the morning, while the streets of Cần Thơ are still fast asleep, the boats of the Cái Răng floating market are already awake. The sky is still dark. The big boats already wait in midstream, and small rowing boats begin to slip through the narrow gaps of water between them. From the bow of every trading boat, a long pole rises straight up. Something dangles from its tip, something no one can quite make out in the dark.

That pole is called a cây bẹo. And the market that gathers right here on the water is one of the largest and oldest floating markets in the Mekong Delta. It sits on the Cần Thơ River, a branch of the Hậu River, close to the Cái Răng Bridge. Today it belongs to Cái Răng ward, in the city of Cần Thơ. From Ninh Kiều wharf, a motorboat gets here in about 30 minutes.

At around five o'clock, the first boats carrying visitors pull away from Ninh Kiều wharf. Only about half an hour later, the market is in full swing. The hours from five to seven in the morning are the golden hours, when the market is at its busiest. The thrum of boat engines and the slap of water against the hulls carry across the river and wake the whole river country.

The people who buy and sell from these boats are the river traders. Many of them grew up on the water. As children they followed their parents up and down the rivers, and as adults they went on to make a living trading farm produce at the floating market. For them, a boat is both a shop and a home that has sheltered several generations. Trading boats from provinces all across the Mekong Delta make their way to this stretch of river to buy and to sell.

Then the sun comes up. The first light of day turns the river a golden orange and glitters on the water. From the top of one cây bẹo hangs a squash. From another hang a few mangoes. Farther off there are bunches of rambutans and longans, a pineapple, a watermelon, a few tubers.

The rule of the cây bẹo is very simple. Whatever hangs on the pole is what the boat sells. A boat that hangs nothing is not selling. And a boat that hangs up a single coconut frond is taking the day off. The pole is usually made of tầm vông bamboo, planted upright or propped at the bow. The goods hang right at the very top, so a buyer can recognize them from far away.

On a wide river crowded with so many boats, the cây bẹo is the trader's shop sign. There is no need to shout. A buyer only has to look up, then paddle over. People call the cây bẹo the soul of the floating market. It is a homespun, inventive way of advertising, born of this land of rivers.

There is something else to notice. On a few boats, laundry flaps in the breeze. That does not mean the boat sells clothes. Those clothes belong to the trader's own family, washed and hung out to dry, because the boat is also their home.

Early in the morning, the main business is wholesale. Big boats bring in fruit and vegetables bought up from many places, trade them here, then sell them on to the merchants who buy for resale. In the old days, before visitors started coming, the floating market was mostly a wholesale market like this. Only when the merchants had nearly finished buying did the traders start selling in small amounts. Baskets of fruit pass by hand from one boat to the next.

In the middle of the market, small boats weave about selling breakfast. Boats that sell food and drink usually do not hang a cây bẹo. A visitor sitting in a boat calls out once, and a food boat rows straight over. The seller catches the side of the visitor's boat with an iron hook, so the two hulls press close together.

Then the seller hands across a steaming bowl of hủ tiếu, a noodle soup popular in southern Vietnam. With it comes a glass of black coffee or iced coffee with milk. Some boats sell bún riêu, a soup of rice noodles. Others sell cháo lòng, rice porridge served with pork offal. Still others sell coconut water. A breakfast eaten with the waves right under your feet is hard to forget.

The market took shape at the beginning of the 20th century, and it has been part of this land for more than a century. Back then, the roads in the southwest were not yet developed. The rivers and canals were the main highways.

When the waterways linking this river with the Cái Tư canal and the Cái Lớn River became easy to travel, more and more boats gathered here every day. People bought and sold right on the water, and the floating market simply grew up on its own. At the floating markets of the southwest, the young men of the trading boats and the young women from the orchard country would also trade verses in song, one answering the other. Those southern folk songs can still be heard by visitors to Cái Răng today.

The name Cái Răng has an unusual ring to it. People have long said that it comes from karan, a Khmer word for the cà ràng. A cà ràng is a stove made of fired clay. Over time, the word slowly drifted into Cái Răng. That is only a theory, and no one has ever confirmed it. Still, it is hard not to wonder about a stretch of river that might be named after a clay stove.

In 2016, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism added the Culture of the Cái Răng Floating Market to the national list of intangible cultural heritage. But the floating market today is not what it used to be. As the roads developed, the way people traveled and traded in the southwest slowly changed. Then came the pandemic. For more than three months, the cây bẹo poles stood still, and the market was empty and quiet. The number of river traders fell sharply, and the boats grew noticeably fewer. The market is slowly changing from a true wholesale market into one that welcomes visitors.

There are far fewer goods than before, but the market still gathers every morning. The river traders here are not putting on a show for anyone. They still earn a real living on the water.

At around nine o'clock, the market thins out. The big boats start their engines and leave, and the small boats scatter along the waterways. The boats still at anchor stop being shops and quietly go back to being homes.

Night settles over the Cần Thơ River. At four the next morning, while the streets are still asleep, the cây bẹo poles quietly rise again in the dark. At the tip of each pole, something sways that no one can quite make out yet. It waits for the sun to come up, to tell the buyers what each boat has to sell today.