The Floating Market – Part 1: Dawn on the River

"Pomelo," said Tuan. "Try."

"I've already had three things."

"Four is the number."

Maya laughed, took the segment of pomelo from his palm and tasted it. Sweet, tart, cold with morning. The wooden boat bobbed gently in the middle of a wide brown river, surrounded by dozens of other boats piled high with pineapples, melons and bundles of green onions. Each vendor hung a sample from a tall pole so buyers could see what was on offer. It was six in the morning and the whole Mekong smelled of fruit, diesel and wet rope.

Maya was thirty-one, a travel writer from Toronto on assignment for a magazine. Tuan, thirty-four, her boatman, had a shy smile and a battered straw hat, and he steered with one foot on the tiller and both hands busy passing her things to taste. He had grown up on the river and knew every stallholder by name.

"This is Mrs Hoa," he said, as a wizened woman in a conical hat pushed a basket of mangoes across. "She says you are too thin."

"She said that? In Vietnamese?"

"In her face." He grinned. "I translate."

They drifted for hours. He showed her where the water was deepest and where kingfishers nested. She asked questions and wrote nothing down, because the notebook kept getting soaked and the answers kept being better in her head. By noon they had drifted to a quiet side channel, where palms leaned over the water and the world fell silent.

Tuan cut the engine. The boat rocked gently in the green shade.

"This is my favourite place," he said. "I never bring clients."

"Why me?"

"Because you listened." He looked at his hands. "And because I would like to know if you would like to stay another day. Not for the story."

"Tuan," said Maya, softly. "I'd like that very much."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Side Channel.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Side Channel.