Monday, September 12, 2005

Pavement Pounders (Part 1)

Most people who sell on the street are from the countryside. They come to Hanoi or other big cities trying to make a better life by doing any job, just to save a bit money to help their families and themselves. Life in a big city is not as easy as what they thought, as they have to work really hard to earn a little money. However, for many it's still better than hard farm labour. This rural workforce does all kinds of work here, from carpentry to fixing houses and cleaning dishes. Daily expenses taken out, they earn around 30,000Vnd per day.

Most of the women sell household goods, including bath room brushes, boxes, mops, brooms, washing baskets and plastic containers. They put all of their things on a bicycle and push it endlessly around Hanoi.

Other ladies earn their living by selling all different kinds of flowers following the season. These people have to wake up at about midnight, go to Nhật Tân's market, then return home to arrange the flowers and start selling at about 6am till 10pm regardless of the weather.

To be continued

1 comment:

Van Cong Tu said...

Hi,
That's a face of Vietnamese who have not much money and they know how to control many things on the back of the bicycle for their daily business :)