Phong Dien Floating Market

In the late 19th century the southwest had no roads, and people bought and sold mostly on the river. Where the Cần Thơ River runs out into the Hậu River, a natural meeting of waters formed. The Hậu River is one of the two branches of the Mekong that flow through Vietnam. Many canals and channels crossed at that spot, and they led into the fertile land of Phong Điền. Boats came to tie up there and trade their goods. That is how the Phong Điền floating market began.

More than a hundred years later, the market is still there.

Phong Điền was once the biggest and most varied floating market in the Mekong Delta. What set it apart from the better-known Cái Răng floating market was the range of its goods. Cái Răng dealt in farm produce, fruit and vegetables. Phong Điền sold everything. There was farm produce, household goods, tools for working the fields and fishing nets. There were baskets and trays, and other woven goods made of bamboo, and even small rowing boats. This was a market that served real daily life, not one put up for tourists.

The Phong Điền area is known for many traditional crafts alongside farming. There is basket weaving, cloth weaving and food processing. Goods from many craft villages poured into the floating market, where sellers and buyers met on the river instead of on land. This is the culture of the river traders, a way of living and trading on the water that belongs to the people of the Mekong Delta.

The market is loveliest in the early morning, when mist still lies on the river and the lights on the boats still glimmer. A visitor can sit in a boat and call a food boat over for a hot bowl of bún riêu or hủ tiếu. These are all noodle dishes, usually served as soups. It is breakfast on the river, as people of the Mekong Delta have eaten it for hundreds of years. From March to June there is also the fruit called dâu Hạ Châu. It is a specialty of the Phong Điền area alone, sweet and sour and crisp at once, quite unlike a mulberry or a strawberry.

Today the Phong Điền market no longer shows a hundred boats at anchor, as it did 20 years ago. As roads and highways developed, trucks carried goods faster and more cheaply than boats could. Many river traders gave up the trade, and whole families went ashore to make a living. The years of the pandemic thinned the market further. Phong Điền never received tourism investment the way Cái Răng did, so nothing draws visitors back.

The market is still here. But there is less of it than there used to be.

And that is the very reason some people come to Phong Điền. Cái Răng is crowded, and most of its boats now sell more to visitors than to residents. Phong Điền has kept the character of a real market. Most of the sellers are local, selling to one another the things they truly need. That is a value of its own, plain rather than flashy.

When the sun has just come up, the river shimmers gold, and a few boats loaded with fruit drift quietly downstream. The knock of oars on the water and the calls of people buying and selling carry through the morning mist. It is a piece of the river culture of the Mekong Delta that is slowly fading, yet it is still there to be seen. A morning on the Phong Điền river is quiet, and it is real.