While one should have more than two interactions before fully judging a complex system, I am fully comfortable making the decree that Vietnamese marketplaces are crazier than navigating Bon lines during Admitted Students Weekend. On Wednesday, September 3rd 2014 I joined 12 other Lewis & Clark students, one Lewis & Clark professor, and a Vietnamese man named Vu Ho on a brief foray to the Tan Dihn and Thi Nghe markets.
Locations of the two markets
Despite the bombardment of colorful swatches of fabric, the smell of sweaty man mixed with cigarette smoke, and the sound of squawking chickens, I managed to hone my sense and focus on the reaction of vendors when two participants, Keith Morency and myself, chose not to purchase their wares after engaging them. Through careful observation and an acute knowledge of human emotion, I would claim for their feelings to be ones of dejection.
As Morency and King strolled aimlessly through the Tan Dihn marketplace, lamenting the lack of coffee physically in hand, we discovered we had wondered into a cloth-lovers dream. Surrounded by stacks of fabric from floor to ceiling and the occasional Vietnamese woman asleep on her thrown of cloth, we were in but one small section of a vast expanse of potential shirts, pillowcases, and anything else one could dream.
Morency’s eye caught hold of a needle in the haystack — one single piece of pink and orange striped cloth. As pictured in Figure One, the clerk exerted great effort (all with a smile on her face) to remove the fabric and say with rudimentary miming abilities that she would make Morency a shirt. The seamstress stated a price, Morency uttered a sharp guffaw, the seamstress’ eyes lost their sparkle, and the two of us wandered away. I glanced behind me as we left the woman to refold the cloth and insert it back to the edifice and saw a look, not of disappointment, but sorrowful understanding that her fingers would not be working night the night away making an outfit for the 6 foot tall Western man.
At the 2nd marketplace, Thi Nghe, Morency discovered something to which his American sensibility was more accustomed — premade clothing. It appeared that this time the store clerk was under no false premonitions that Morency would give her his Dong (1 US Dollar is equal to 21,000 Vietnamese Dong). She seemed bitter for the entire interaction, and when we left after Morency tried on her shirt without making a purchase, the look of rejection was engrained deeper in her already disappointed face.
With scientific research in mind, I believed it to be only appropriate that I take note of how a Vietnamese woman would react to one of us purchasing a clothing item in order to see the contrast. I found what must be a 100% authentic Hugo Boss belt for the high price of 200,000đ or $10. After a minor amount of bartering and a major amount of flirting, the price was reduced to 150,000đ. Sheer euphoria danced across her exuberant face, and I was able to witness both ends of the spectrum of emotions of Vietnamese women in the marketplace interacting with Morency and myself.