Our first stop will be at the gardenner's house to see how the coconut sugar is being made. The gardener climb great bamboo ladders to cut the flowers at the top of a coconut palm. They attach a hollowed bamboo container to collect about one liter of sap overnight from each flower, just as New Englanders do with cuts in maple sugar trees in the early spring. The factory uses the old dead palm fronds and husks to fuel the fire to boil down the sap to a delicious sugar. You can buy a kg for two US$. The factory does not waste anything, and gets coconut drinks, meat, coconut oil, utensils made from the wood and husks, and thatching from the palm fronds. We continue the trip to a nearby pier. Then take a ride in small long tail boat on canals to the floating market. The brightly painted 30-foot boats have a car-sized engine. Conversation is limited to nudging and pointing. Garlands and a bottle decorate the prow and bring good fortune. Canals here are about ten feet wide; the boat much longer. It slows to a walk to negotiate the tight, right angle intersections and around 90 degree tiny turns. People live along the canals, and the canals are like roads to them. You see women washing clothes and babies; a man in the water adjusting his boat, a woman swimming, water hyacinth floating. The banks are mostly concrete walls or perhaps have no walls at all, with water in the trees. Some of the homes have a blue plastic barrier rope floating in front, protection from trash or waves. The area is at sea level, so the water is brackish. The bridges are low and the boat driver is careful to pass underneath slowly. Trees along shore include coconut, mangos, papayas, bananas and rubber. Houses were built on stilts have docks below where boats pull up. There are porches above the river. Sometimes the boats are lifted off the water into docks. The boats are painted in bright primary color, long and boxy with an upturned bow like a Turkish slipper. Some small boats have the flat bottoms and plane furiously along the narrow canal with almost no wake. We arrive at the floating market and change from the long tail boat to a paddle boat to explore the main part of the market. The place was jammed with boats selling everything -- fruits, vegetables, hats, clothes and handicrafts. The people in boats sell produce and other goods to people in other boats or people on the shore. Some of them even cook dishes that they sell from their boats. There is even a sort of variety store that peoples arrive at in boats. |
Climbing up
Boiling sugar
Boat ride
Villager
Kids
Washing
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