Wandering with Cu

Friends.

Friends are for doing things together.  Phan Cu is my friend and we love doing photography together.  We finally found a day when I had no work planned and there was  nice weather, so we threw a leg over our motorbikes and headed out to the countryside to see what we could find.

(Be sure to click on each photo - you'll see a larger version of the photo.)

Actually, I was riding Trang’s motorbike.  She bought it when she worked in Saigon and gave it to her family to use when she went to America to study.  It was nice knowing I was using her moto.  If the poor machine could talk, it was probably wondering why it had to carry a huge overweight western man rather than the svelte young Vietnamese woman it used to carry.

The first thing Cu and I found was a village celebrating cúng đât – a ceremony conducted in homes, by villages, and in businesses - praying to the Father of the Land asking for good fortune.  It is held on any day during the lunar month of February.  By the time we arrived, the older men had finished praying in the local pagoda and were enjoying a morning feast.   Cu warmed up the audience for me by taking a few shots and telling the men that the big westerner was okay.  If you are wondering about the clothing, it is called an ao dai (pronounced ow yie).  More famous is the ao dai for women, but men also wear ao dai on formal occasions.  I once attended a Christmas Eve mass at a Catholic church and the elders wore ao dai.  Only older men wear them, and they are either dark blue or black with white pants as seen in this photo, or dark blue with medallions as seen in this photo of the man with a wonderfully long beard.  We shared laughs as he pointed at me, then at his own beard – and encouraged me to grow a beard as long as his.  I am always intrigued by meetings like this – I speak no Vietnamese and he spoke no English, yet we communicated wonderfully.  A smile and genuine laughter work wonders.

Though it was late morning when we left the pagoda, the village market was still humming.   Marketplace shots in Asia can be cliché photos, yet it is also true that the marketplace is a central part of village life.  Most of the wares are not produced by the sellers – they get up very early in the morning, travel to Hue to the big Dong Ba market, then buy what they need to sell back in their village.

Further down the path, we came upon four girls – I’ll guess they were in their early teens.  Like girls everywhere, they get the giggles at the slightest provocation.  In this case, I was the provocation.  They giggled and tried to speak English, but spent more time giggling than talking.  Cu thought the whole episode funny, but managed to translate my request for the pose I wanted.  Notice the t-shirt.  You see girls wear shirts with cute western sayings on them quite often, but the kids have no idea what the sayings mean.

Next door, Grandma was preparing lunch.  She didn’t seem thrilled by my presence at first – maybe she mistrusted my intentions with the four girls – but pointing at the camera and framing a shot, I got a smile from her.  Looking at her own picture in the LCD of my camera brought a laugh.

Shy smiles are what I got from this eleven year old girl.  She and her single mother live in a one room concrete block house built next to a putrid canal.  Her mother has no husband, no land to plant vegetables, and no education – just a skill to make conical hats.  These are not sold to tourists because she lives too far away from them and has no motorbike to get in to Hue to sell them.  Mother and daughter sell their hats in the local market – they make two hats a day and make 20,000 dong – a little over a dollar a day.  Somehow, the money is found to put the girl in school.  An education will be her only way out of abject poverty.

When Cu and I go out shooting, we always take photos of traditional Viet Nam – images of an exotic land on the other side of the world that Americans expect to see.  Cu is interested in selling photos to tourists as well as documenting a way of life that is quickly disappearing.  Of course, I take the same kind of photos – but such photos do not accurately portray Viet Nam.  It is a country of very rapid change.  This photo of my bearded friend and his grandson show that change – tradition standing next to modernity.

Two old men out wandering around with cameras – a good way for friends to spend time.  Fun day.

Comments

[Rogena]

Got to say Doug, pictures are great (as usual:)-the old lady is absolutely my mother-in-law. Doing a great job of capturing the Vietnam that I fear is going away very quickly. Makes me wonder if progress (for lack of a better word) is always a good thing? Your take on gestures, on the money. I am still surprised that I could spend a month in a country, not knowing the language (only thank you, and sorry comprised my vocabulary), and still was able to communicate enought to fall in love with a family! A smile and hands can say so much.

[Bruce Burton]

You seem to be enjoying yourself more this trip. I'm glad. Wonderful candid shots and a smooth commentary. Continue having fun.

[michael]

fantastic picture of cu. that should be your screensaver

[Thuy]

love your photos. I'm glad to hear that many families in Vietnam are seeing some benefits of the progress, however, for me, it is sad to see overdevelopment. I love the rural Vietnam and seeing the simple life