Dear Mom,
I lost my riding-at-night glasses and would like another pair from Harbor Freight. If you're living in Bend and can help me get those and something from Walmart THIS WEEKEND, I'd be grateful. The next people coming to Vietnam from Bend are leaving on Monday, so I don't have time to order what I need online and have it arrive to them on time. Email me if you're up for a small shopping trip on my behalf.
The Christmas season officially ends for us today, with three more family members (one son and two nephews) flying homeward.
In this picture I'm drinking a soursop shake and my dad and my son are sampling durian smoothies at the biggest municipal market. Durian is ... durian a whole topic unto itself, but I realize I've never talked about markets.
The most common market is a tạp hóa ("top hwaah" with a sharply rising tone as you finish hóa)
These tạp hóa storefronts are generally in someone's house, taking up what we would consider the front living room. The hanging packets across the top are single-use soaps and shampoos. You can also buy TP, snacks, water, drinks, some cooking essentials like oil or fish sauce. If it starts to rain and you're unprepared, you can buy a single-use poncho made of the thinnest plastic you can imagine.
No negotiating prices. Sometimes items are marked, usually not. Sometimes I'm charged a "foreigner tax" and get to pay a higher price, but I don't get mad. There's no point in trying to tell them that I just saw someone else get the same thing for 10K cheaper, or that it's got a standard price and they're gouging. Just note which stalls seem trustworthy and use them in preference to the others.
Next up are the Mini-Marts:
These are chain brands, convenience stores with things you'd expect in an Asian Circle K, plus maybe vegetables/fruit. I'll find one of these for every 5 of the tạp hóa corner stores.
And while there are some huge stores like Mega (a Thai company similar in some ways to a Costco) or Lotte (a Korean chain similar to Super-Target), the only other category of market is a Municipal Market. They range in size, but you're going to find a similar array of things that happen in and around a local "Chợ" Market. IMAGES
At the Municipal Chợ, you'll be able to buy MOST of what a person needs for daily life:
- veggies
- meat/fish
- ice
- fruit
- flowers
- bamboo plants
- clothing
- seamstress
- ancestor-honoring stuff
- food stalls with metal benches (that's where we are in the picture above, holding our durian-fruit shakes)
- dried fruits/nuts
- candles
- scissors
- plastic containers
- umbrellas
- all the stuff available at a tạp hóa
And then around each Chợ (pronounced "chuh-uh" with a rising tone) you're going to find the same sort of shops within a half-block:
- motorbike helmets
- gold shops (this is where you should exchange USD)
- optical shops
- food stalls that shift from breakfast to morning snack, then disappear for 2-3 hours, then reappear to sell early-dinner snack
- and obviously some coffee shops and motorbike repair shops, but that's a given since they're so ubiquitous
It takes some time to get the hang of knowing where to go when I need a certain item, and then once I've gone somewhere and had a positive experience, I always go back to the same person when I need something similar. I'm good at making eye contact with the sellers and smiling, so that when I return I usually get a happy greeting.
Ah, when I wrote that last sentence I could hear someone reading and thinking "yeah, they're happy because they know they can cheat him again," but that's actually not true. The ones who cheat me are universally unhappy to see me again. I'm never harsh with them, and I try to avoid going back to them so this seldom happens, but they never gesture to me to buy something when I go past. It's so different with the ones who give me the local prices from the start--they're happy to have me as a returning, eye-contact-smiling customer.
Which brings up one more point about the markets, and haggling. There's really only one sort of place we haggle here, and it's the places that sell things to tourists. Haggling/negotiating for prices is not done at a tạp hóa or most chợs (except for the one Chợ Han in town that is dedicated to tourist traffic).
I'd sign off by saying "okay, that's all, I'm off to the Chợ/Market now" but it's 1pm and nothing is open. All the Chợ stalls are asleep and the tạp hóa lady would wonder why I'm waking her up to buy a wheel of peanuts. The only places to go shopping at 1pm around here are the minimarts, which usually don’t carry what I’m needing, or one of the big stores across town, and I'm too sleepy to want to make the journey.
Love,
Tim/Janet
