Elderly street vendors in Saigon

I was born in Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon), but in Hue city, an old ancient city. Hue is a small city and people living peacefully there. However, like many other cities in Vietnam, people in Hue will leave their hometowns to go to Ho Chi Minh city for earning money and help their family. I’m the one among them, leaving my hometown to Saigon when I was 28 (after some year working as a university lecturer), and then, got a good job in Ho Chi Minh city. However, about 90% of the people go to Saigon are not high educated people, thus, they become construction workers, waiters / waitresses, garbage collectors, and many of them become street vendors.

I do care about street vendors; I see my grandmother and my aunt inside them. In 1960s, when my father was just 8 years old, and Vietnam was in it civil war, my grandmother and my aunt had to leave their hometown (Quang Tri province) and came to Hue city to take care of my grandfather, who was injured by the torture of South Vietnam’s soldiers. They also had to earn money to feed my father (the youngest brother) and my other aunt. My grandmother sold vegetables inside of a street market for twenty years until the day my father became a university lecturer. But my aunt is still a street vendor until now, she lives independently and has worked as a street vendor from Hue, to Saigon and now in Da Nang city for her living. And I proud of her, she’s my heroic.

Back to the topic of this article, I love to take photo of street vendors because I do care about them. Normally, people don’t care about street vendors lives, they just come, buy things and go. If you care about them, they are very happy. Happiness is not how much money you earn, but how about you take care of people around you or how people care about you.

I took a lot of elderly street vendors, because they have their own stories. The more talking to them, the more I admire them. They are street vendors, but they are deserved to respect.

It’s look like I’m writing too much. Now, let’s take a look of some of my pictures.

The first picture is about a very old woman, always sitting at the corner of Nguyen Thai Sown street and Phan Van Tri street, she sells lottery ticket. I took this picture when I was on bike and took it with my A7Rii + FE 16-35.

The woman below is very poor, she earn money by collecting things from garbage. But she’s optimistic and always happy. Taken at Ha Kieu apartment, Duong Quang Ham, Go Vap, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam with A7Rii + FE 16-35 f/4.

A warm smile of a street vendor, he came from the middle of Vietnam. Taken with Sony RX1R.

A street vendor under the smoke  from a small restaurant. She sells lottery tickets. Taken with Sony RX1R.

An old disabled man, selling lottery tickets. He has leprosy disease, but he is not useless at all.

 I took hundreds of pictures for street vendors subject. However, five pictures a post may be enough, and you will not be bored of my photos.

Happy shooting!