Dear Friends and Family,

There is no entrance to my favorite place in Hoi Anh, the food market. Instead, one strolls by a custom tailoring shop and sights plastic crates, emptied and piled into tables. Atop the crates are oval-shaped wooden platters of fruit for sale: mangosteens, slightly larger than golf-balls, purple and capped by a green stem and leaves. Jagged durian, Asia’s “king of fruits,” a delicacy so malodorous that hotels forbid it, brown grape-sized longan with its thin white pulp that covers an easy-to-accidentally-bite-into black seed. Long green papayas with the bland orange flesh are popular here, as are finger-sized bananas, intense, delicious: sellers string bunches of them up, and they hang in upside down fan-shapes. Fruit sellers are less interested in selling to western tourists, as are the flower sellers across from them.

Stalls of flowers in Hoi Anh do not overly differ from anywhere else: sellers stuff white plastic buckets with pink, peach, and yellow roses, formed and so perfect that they must not travel far to be sold at market. Also for sale are red, orange, and yellow Gerbera daisies but they are not nearly as entrancing as the national flower of Vietnam, the pink lotus which are sold, unopened, in bouquets of four coupled with shower-head lotus head seed pods. When I ask the flower seller if I may take a picture of her stall, she says,

“Yes. Where are you from?”

“America. Where are you from?” I reply.

“From Hoi Anh! But my sister America. California. She come see me tomorrow.” She confided.

“I am very happy for you. Enjoy your sister,” I smile as I continue deeper into the market.

Further in, I turn into an alley used as a parking lot and count 10 motorcycles and 3 bicycles. I bow to an old lady in a conical hat while another approaches me from the side.

“Madam? You want pedicure? I do nice. 2 dol-lar.”

“No, thank you.” I smile. But she follows me.

“How much you want pay? I do. Very cheap.  There. 2 dol-lar. Pedicure. Very nice!”

“No, thank you. Have a nice day.” I reply. But the lady follows me through the alley and as I turn to walk by a bunch of food stalls, under shady umbrellas, piled with food that I cannot identify and that I am too shy to photograph because I must photograph the cook and I loathe asking to photograph people. Pedicure lady leaves me near a wrinkled old lady wearing what appears to be cotton pajamas rolled to her knees just behind her perplexing combination of pieced raw pork on cardboard and bouquets of marigolds. I sigh and smile at the next old lady who is selling bundles of lettuce and a vegetable translated both as “water spinach” and “morning glory” from faded blue plastic baskets when another lady approaches me,

“Where you from?”

“America. And no thank you.”

“No thank you, for what?” She asks indignantly.

I chastise myself for rudeness. “Sorry. I am looking at the market. No more.”

“Market is good. You want pedicure. Your feet”—she points to my left heel—“you need pedicure.”

I stop. I look her directly in the eyes. “No. Thank. You. Have a nice day.” Despite my firm refusal she, too follows me for another few steps, until I reach an egg stall.

Eggs are, of course, common in Vietnam and this seller’s large crates brim with brown eggs, whitish eggs, smaller brown eggs, and tiny speckled eggs. What I presume are chicken, duck and quail eggs. Behind the egg stall is the fish market, and beyond the fish market is the river. I walk into the midst of the fish market, find a corner and watch.

Hoa Anh’s fish are fresh fresh: their eyes are hard and clear, their scales are shiny. Old ladies, with serious faces and dressed in thin cotton clothing that I would purchase from Walmart’s sleepwear section, squat on their haunches behind low tables with baskets or cardboard covered in silver fish, fresh prawns, and squid. They wave jade bracelets in the air as they quibble with each other or, without customers, busy themselves with small Nokia cell phones. A woman tourist with white skin, bleached hair and tanned shoulders walks between their stalls, photographing fish with a long lens. I remain in my corner watching, writing, not photographing. Some of the ladies glance sideways at me, then pretend to ignore me. I decide that this is because tourists seem to average a minute and two photographs before carefully walking back out of the market. I am anosmic so I wonder about the smell. The concrete floors around me are wet but they appear clean but then there are fish, or hacked pieces of fish or clear bags of fish in every direction. One lady puts aside her wooden basket filled with silver-dollar sized fish, takes a scrub brush to her table with a swiiiiiish swish.

I finally move out of my corner, resisting the urge to photograph until I discover a huge pink fish under a cover of plastic. I ask the vendor if I can photograph.

“Yes!” She cries as she uncovers her prize. “1 dol-lar!”

I laugh, snap the photo, and then oblige her with 10,000 dong, the equivalent of 50 cents. I don’t usually give into larceny but something about the lady’s huzpah makes me laugh – and she cackles with me as I hand her the bill.

On the river side of the market, a black sun umbrella has died and decorated with a ladies hat and belt. A large blacked metal tea pot boils on top of red bricks. A green vegetable that could be sliced zucchini or perhaps green-colored peppers dry in the sun.

As I pick my way between fish stalls, I briefly fantasize about moving to Hoi Anh – purely for its food market.

Wouldn’t you?

Love,

Laura

One "Entrance" into the Hoi Anh food market.

Flowers for sale at the Hoi Anh food market.

Eggs at the Hoi Anh food market. 

Bags - literally - of fish at the Hoi Anh food market. 

Some food, sliced and green,
at the Hoi An food market. 

Fish - very, very fresh fish - at the Hoi Anh food market.

Bon appetite!!