Semester at Sea Fall 2006 Voyage |
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Souvenir Sellers around Ben Thanh Market by Tatsuru Kimura
At Ben Thanh market, they sell various goods and services both for tourists and local people including T-shirts, food, and manicure service for locals. They also sell brand goods but most of them are knockoffs. In The limits of AuthenticityVietnamese Consumer Markets, Elizabeth F. Vann explains that Vietnamese do not appreciate the authenticity of merchandise: they would just as soon buy “mimic goods” that imitate the original but at a cheaper price. As she mentions, they sell such things openly, and display them in front of stores. They sell mimic bags, sunglasses, sandals and so on. It is difficult to tell the difference of quality between some of these mimic and authentic goods. Around the market, many street vendors walk around to sell souvenirs to tourists. They hang a big shallow-bottomed box from their neck and show their goods including such mimics and knockoffs in the box. They are persistent enough to follow a particular tourist for twenty minutes. Some kids works as street vendors. In fluent English, a girl who looks like she is about in the sixth grade said that if I didn't buy something from her, she could not eat a supper. It was more like begging rather than selling.
In It seems that the tie of community in Ben Thanh market makes the market a safer place. Clerks of stores in the market can even sleep while they are tending their store because they tend each other’s store while their neighbor is sleeping. I could see so many sleeping women in day time and observe so many ways to sleep there. Some lie on the floor, some lean against the wall or goods. I guess that they can sleep well even in front of strangers because they assume that they are safe. I did not see such many sleeping people in other countries.
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