Oil and Lacquer

I went to Can Tho to attend the Fulbright Enrichment Seminar. It was a gathering of all seven of the Fulbrighters in Vietnam. We met at Can Tho University, a very large university in Vietnam that is famous for its agriculture department. In a conference room, we shared the progress of our different projects. The topics of research included, curriculum development in agricultural studies, family health care, microcredit economics, photography, curriculum development in media studies, creating a screenplay, and painting.

We got a tour of the school, some of us participated in a curriculum development seminar with faculty, and some of us went to a seminar on life in America with students. Later, the group of us that talked with the students became judges in an English-speaking contest where the winner won a full-tuition scholarship (price value is about $100). Each student had to answer 2 questions that they prepared for and 1 unprepared follow-up question based on the prepared answer. The school originally wanted us to determine the winner based on a point system. But, as it turned out, some of the high scoring students did not seem worthy of the full-tuition scholarship. So, we, the judges, quarreled about what made a good English speaker until the winner was chosen almost unanimously.

Can Tho is in the Mekong Delta. It is a city that thrives on the produce. One night, after going out for Ban Xeo (Vietnamese savory crepes) with some local friends, they asked us if we wanted to go out for fruit. Over some fruit, we decided to wake up or stay up until 3:30 am to take a boat out to the Floating Market.

At 3:30 am, everything was still dark. There were many boats sitting (or waiting) on the water. Then as we rowed out into the Mekong, we started to see people make their coffee and brush their teeth from inside of the boats. Many of the market people live on the boats their entire lives. They wave the produce that they specialize in selling on a stick in the front of their boat. By 4:30 am, the sleeping boats become a floating city.