It was hell!
This morning, I got up at 5 a.m. again to board a boat at the end of the canal at 5:30 a.m. and travel to Phong Dien. The sky was overcast, which made me happy, because otherwise, the issue of shade would have been added to all the other difficulties. After about half an hour, we reached the floating market, and after another half hour, it started to drizzle. That was really annoying, of course. I didn’t want to take my camera out, the vendors covered their goods with opaque plastic sheeting, and the mood was (at least for me) at rock bottom.
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After about another half hour, it had stopped raining, but it was definitely still too dark. I can’t just adjust the ISO value on my films… The first boats have “set off.” In addition, the river’s flow was extremely fast. We want to take shelter from the rain under the bridge and have become slightly wedged in; the boat operator was unable to stay in place while rowing.
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So we went back to the others and waited… The vendors were all having a lot of fun, as I had seen the day before. Then it gradually got lighter, I set up my camera and tried to take pictures. And that was almost impossible because everything was moving. Once I had set up the image on the screen, I was able to take the Polaroid, develop it for 2 minutes, insert the film cassette, and the whole situation looked completely different. Our boat was closer to the others, which were no longer in my focus, and another boat had moved in between… OMG! Since the amount of light was right, I took the photo virtually blind. I maxed out the aperture and shutter speed as much as possible, hoping that the aperture would allow for a deep enough depth of field and that the shutter speed would be fast enough to prevent blurring. At least the women weren’t moving (the men were already gone).
Well, in six weeks I’ll know if it worked…
Somehow, things can’t go on like this… But how then?
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When everything cleared up, we drove to a stand that we had seen on the way there: flooded!
This woman was so incredibly positive, laughed a lot, and kept asking if she would be on the cover of a well-known magazine—she would be delighted!
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Then we headed home, passing a few fishermen and finally arriving at the gate that blocks the main river, a canal built by the French that flows from Vietnam in the east into the Gulf of Thailand. This gate, like many, many others, is closed at every high tide and then reopened afterwards, of course, so that the side channels don’t fill up too much. This task is carried out by the locals. Hard to believe…
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Somewhat by chance, I was able to help with the cooking this afternoon. The New Year celebration in Vietnam, called TED, or luna new years ev, is a big deal, with three days of festivities. Here at the lodge, we cook with the guests (not least because everything else is closed). And I was able to join in—and kindly also stay for dinner later. Like everything else here, it was fantastic!
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