Tuesday, December 18, 2012

To market, to market....


'Lets go looking for pigs today'.... Mrs Hanh's good morning to me!
Ok? Sure?
I assumed we would go to the pig farm, pick out a pig we liked and pay for it. Easy!
Not quite.... We ride out of Tam Ky to the next district and stop at a restaurant.....
'Yes here!' Mrs Hanh exclaims.
We go in, sit down and a man emerges without pants on.... He stops dead in his tracks, looks at us and back tracks for his pants.
Meet our pig broker! Mrs Hanh whispers in my ear 'he marry before have two children, now he no more wife, he like man!'
Ok, so we have a gay pig broker. Am n ot sure why that info was relevant, but anyway!
We sit and discuss logistics. How much do we want to spend? The price of pigs here are based on the pigs weight. 65,000VND per piggy kilo. That's about $3 a kilo.
We had to determine if we wanted a breeder pig or an eater pig next!
We needed both however I was not buying pigs without seeing them first!
So on the bikes we go out to the pig farm I guess.....
I guess not.... We end up at some ladies house!
We head out back to the pig sty where there were two breeder pigs we could choose from....
Thank God for Dee, a former volunteer who has grown up on pig farms and knew what to look for.
It was hilarious to say the least!


We ended up choosing the pig we wanted and I handed over the money to him to give to the lady.
Dee and I were heading back in to take one last look at our pig when all of a sudden there was yelling, a flurry of arms and hand gestures and us being told to turn around and head out!
Mrs Hanh was laughing so hard she fell on the floor, our pig broker was talking very animatedly and the lady was teasing him and his hand gestures.....
Dee and I had no idea what was going on!
Turns out, when the lady saw it was us that wanted the pig, she changed her fee and increased it to western price!
So our lovely pig broker had a tantrum and said no way, we weren't buying the pig now etc etc.
All's well that ends well though and she left her original price intact. Everyone had a laugh and off we went....


Who knew buying a pig would be so entertaining!

2 comments:

  1. She loves the gossip does that one! Keep it up!

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  2. Anna,

    I just read your blog. It is reassuring that the nurse at baby orphanage is still useless... the 2 weeks we had there were the most frustrating of my medical career and I didnt deal with it well... so happy to hear you have made a fantastic difference to these kids lives, that we had no chance of doing in our 2 weeks...

    Gav

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