Sunday March 13, 2011

In the morning, we visited a small Vietnamese village, Cai Be, where we saw how they make popped rice, Vietnamese rice paper and coconut candy.  The people are quite gracious and all the children say "hello" and love to have their picture taken.  Sam loves it she takes many pictures of the kids and relishes showing them the shots.

In the afternoon we travelled by a traditional Sampn to visit a brick factory and rice mill in Sa Dec  followed by a visit to a local market.  It is amazing everything is pretty well done manually there are very few machines.  The workers are mostly women who work 10 hours days for $2.00.  They work 6 days a week.  The work is very demanding as I often saw women hauling small carts over rough muddy paths that must have weighed more than twice their weight.  But they were all happy and all smiled at us and said hello.  \the children go to the plant with the women and play in amongst the work.