.

Fifty-years-old, she has four daughters. The two oldest are married, with each having a hair salon. The two youngest are twins, and they're also studying to become hair stylists, so they can work for their sisters. Her husband is a motorcycle mechanic.

"I'm from Bình Định, but my parents took me up here, so I've lost my roots."

At this roadside stall, with its hammocks and plastic chairs, she sells corn on the cob, coffee, soft drinks, bananas and coconut milk. All of the other stalls on this stretch of Route 26 also specialize on corn on the cob.

Vietnamese have a curious custom of clustering identical businesses, so in Hanoi, for example, there's a street that sells nothing but coffins.

She lives half a mile from her business.

"Are you 60 yet?" she asked me.

"No, no," I laughed, "I'm not quite 55. All this white hair..."

"That's all right. My husband's hair is also white, and one of my daughters, all her hair turned white when she was just 14. It's her gene."

"Has she dyed her hair?"

"No, she likes her white hair! It's good that yours is all white, because when it's half black, half white, it's very ugly."

Like many Vietnamese women, the lady's all wrapped up even in this stifling heat because she's afraid of "turning black."

"The sun here turns you black immediately! When I go to Saigon, I turn white within a week!"

Like others, she told me most of the region's young people have gone to the cities to work in factories. There just aren't enough jobs here.


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