AFP, Vietnam :
Fixing weighing scales used to be good business on Vietnam’s floating Cai Rang market, but the last repairman on the river now makes just a few dollars a month as modernity pushes traders to land.
Surrounded by dusty old scales on his cluttered houseboat, Nguyen Van Ut says vendors are giving up their boats for better lives on terra firma where supermarkets draw the traders who once thronged the waterway.
“I don’t have many customers now. In the past, it was alright, but now many boats have left the floating market… people on vessels have switched to vehicles,” the 71-year-old told AFP.
He got into the repairs business 30 years ago on the Can Tho river to support his surviving children after his wife and two of his sons drowned in an accident.
For a time life was good, but now he relies on handouts from his children – – three of them work in nearby Can Tho city.
Fixing weighing scales used to be good business on Vietnam’s floating Cai Rang market, but the last repairman on the river now makes just a few dollars a month as modernity pushes traders to land.
Surrounded by dusty old scales on his cluttered houseboat, Nguyen Van Ut says vendors are giving up their boats for better lives on terra firma where supermarkets draw the traders who once thronged the waterway.
“I don’t have many customers now. In the past, it was alright, but now many boats have left the floating market… people on vessels have switched to vehicles,” the 71-year-old told AFP.
He got into the repairs business 30 years ago on the Can Tho river to support his surviving children after his wife and two of his sons drowned in an accident.
For a time life was good, but now he relies on handouts from his children – – three of them work in nearby Can Tho city.
