Girls from the Black Hmong tribe are the most visible attraction in the Vietnamese hill resort of Sapa, for the simple reason that many skip school to sell their ethnic weavings there.
As rain pelts down on the town, Ly Thi Zao, 11, huddles on the steps of a hotel. She is accompanied by her cousins Giang Thi Mao, 14, and Giang Thi Chan, 12, and friend Ly Thi Chau, 13.
The girls come from the Ta Van and Lao Chai villages near Sapa but bunk in with older Hmong girls who work as tour guides in town. They hang around Sapa's street corners selling trinkets, conversing easily with foreign tourists in English that hints of French, Australian and Cockney accents - depending on who they learnt what phrase from.
The early morning trains from Hanoi to Lao Cai - an hour's drive away - bring them new friends and customers every day from all over the world. On the flip side, their extensive contact with foreign tourists reduces their chances of getting married within their own community, says Dr Tran Huu Son, director of Lao Cai province's Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The Hmong boys find them too westernised, while the girls find their male counterparts too backward.
The Hmongs get less than 5 per cent of the tourism earnings in Sapa, as most of the money is made by travel agencies and hotel owners, says Dr Son.
Dr Son is trying to improve the Hmongs' lot by training and licensing more of them as tour guides. The other way to raise their long-term income is to get the girls to stay in school. Illiteracy rates are high, making the women susceptible to bogus job offers from human traffickers.
But it's an uphill battle, given the quick money that can be made from selling trinkets to tourists.
Chan hawks pillowcases for 100,000 dong (S$8.50) each, and blankets for 350,000 dong. She resumes classes in a few weeks, but admits: 'I don't like school. I'm the only girl in my class. Last year, there were eight girls in my class, but now there is only me left.'
Dredging out a living
Nguyen Van To, 12, takes a break from shovelling sand as his father Nguyen Van Chic steers their boat to the sand collection point.
MOST visitors disgorged by the trains stopping at Hue make a beeline for the Perfume River, but few encounter river dwellers like Mr Nguyen Van Chic.
The 42-year-old man makes a living dredging construction sand from the river bed, living and working off a boat anchored half a kilometre from the citadel of the former Vietnamese capital.
Dredgers say the authorities keep them away from the tourist sights to avoid sullying the genteel image of Hue.
The work is backbreaking - he drags giant steel scoops along the river bed until they are filled with sand, usually a load of about 40kg each time. This is then slowly hauled to the water's surface with a manual pulley, then piled onto a wooden boat.
It takes about two hours for him and his family to collect one boat-load of sand that will earn him 100,000 dong (S$8.50). A middleman then sells it to building contractors.
Mr Nguyen used to fish for a living but switched to dredging sand when overfishing eroded his income. As a dredger, he has been able to save enough to buy a houseboat and a television.
The price he gets for sand has risen just 10 per cent over five years, despite the cost of housing and construction materials in Vietnam rising 23 per cent last year. Still, more fishermen in Hue are switching to dredging sand these days, he says.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on August 23, 2008.
