Thursday, November 22, 2007

Toys to Eat

Flour toys

I remember very well these flour toys because they belong to my childhood. When I was a little boy and I used to see many old people making these beautifully shaped toys to sell in front of my school and in the market. During my years at elementary school and maybe secondary school, the sellers were always around but they seemed to disappear when I went to high school. Maybe I grew too old to notice them?

Flour toys maker

I hadn't seen them for such a long time until last week in front of the Ethnology museum. I was really nicely surprised, and it brought back a lot of fond memories from my school days. Because I took quite a few photos, I bought several toys from the seller above but I didn't eat them like I used to do when I was a little boy. I remembered when we finished our classes, we usually bought at least one everyday and asked our mothers to put them on the top of the cooked rice for about 15 minutes then we used to eat them. They didn't have much flavour but that's the way we did at that time.

Flour toy maker

The man told me he spends less than 10 minutes making each one. They all look gorgeous, colorful and only 5000Vnd. If you ever see this man, buy some to help him out. Nice thing to keep even though it's another dust collector :)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is such an interesting post. They don't make these in the US.
Thanks Godknows

alan said...

Though at times I visit and don't comment, I am always amazed and enlightened by your posts. Thank you for every photograph and every word!

And thank you for brightening my world!

alan

Anonymous said...

I wasn't able to visit Nha Trang last
week on my trip to Vietnam from the United States because I heard that the weather there is bad since it is rain season. I just got back home to California yesterday but I'd like to keep in touch with you and maybe meet up with you so you can show me around Nha Trang when I return to Vietnam in the near future.

Kind regards, Bao

Anonymous said...

when I was kid, I thought these r edible :)

Con-tatto! said...

This is a reportage of Mau, s friend of mine, in a journey in Vietnam!!!

Van Cong Tu said...

Thanks all.
Bao, keep in touch then

The Braologist said...

How interesting-- I remember these from my childhood in Southern China as well.

I don't think I ever ate mine though. It's very strange. I had completely forgotten about them until I read this post. It must've been almost 20 years since I've seen one of these :)

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