“Perhaps 2:30 is not the best time to visit a market” I mused, grinning as I passed my 18th napping shopkeeper. This was our first outing into the realm of observational study in Vietnam. Meant, as all first outings are, to demonstrate the ‘challenges inherent to the research process’ and to force us to refine our approaches to studying markets it certainly succeeded on both counts. My original intention was to observe enough interactions to see if I could start to understand the sort of “social script” that governs market purchases. Instead, I found myself just trying to figure out the activity of the place.
I did three rounds of Tan Dihn market, though my wanderings could hardly be scientific, passing approximately 50 stalls (they are hard to tell apart) at a time. In three wanderings I was only approached 5 times, though notably I’ve learned that I walk around with a bit of a scowl here which probably was not helpful. I also tried to keep a count of how many stalls actually had customers engaged in a potential purchase. I will be the first to admit only approximate numbers, but I would reliably stand by the claim that only 5-10% of the stalls had active customers. Most interactions lasted beyond 3 minutes, which was the limit I put myself on watching a stall from a distance before moving on. At least for this round, I felt that was quite enough of an intrusion on the space, especially without substantive cause.
I couldn’t muster the comfort to really watch, for an extended time, the few shoppers that were there. Instead I pursued my systematic wandering, catching what glimpses of market life I could. Napping was predominant, but here and there in the back alleys children were running around playing. Lured by these back ways I soon found myself walking around the block, outside of the market and along streets with a more traditional (by US standards, perhaps less traditional by local ones!) series of store fronts. For kicks I repeated my methods here, and in one pass around the block found that easily 70% of stores or more had what looked to be customers. The tendency of multiple family members to share one store complicated matters somewhat (is that really a shopper?), but all the same the distinction in activities was clear. At least given the time of day, perhaps markets were not the place to look.
Thi Nghe Market was next, and was at least a bit more happening. At least it was more crowded, and I was grazed by three motor bikes passing in the narrow lines in my first pass through. Even so, there were not dramatically more purchasers than there had been before. I meant to repeat my previous comparison, but found a radically different street system around us. I got lost(ish) wandering the narrow streets, assuming that if I kept turning left I would find my way back. My theory would prove accurate, but not until a great deal more turns than I had expected. Among these included a trek through an alley where a taxi had recently bowled into a street side fish vendor, shattering one of the plastic buckets serving as a fish tank. As the fish flopped to their bitter end the taxi driver got out and after a brief, unintelligible (but entirely polite looking) conversation he gave her what looked to be a 50,000D bill and was on his way.
Elsewhere I passed a small elementary school, with the kids just getting out. The traffic jam was downright suburban, if you considered the jostling pack of motorbikes to be somehow equivalent to minivans. Nearby was a series of internet cafés and a handful of street vendors. It had all the bustle of after school city streets, and vaguely hailed my own childhood. So while I made no progress in my market “study,” the detour seemed worth the while, and offered me a part of the city I would like to return to again. The markets themselves were slow, intriguing for a moment, but bearing nothing in particular that sparked my curiosity or begged further questions. It seems the vibrancy and life of the city – at least the sort that I recognize and am intrigued by – is elsewhere, and I am already trying to devise ways to learn more about that.