Ngoc car­ries her bicy­cle through Hoi An old town. Every day she vis­its the stores and restau­rants around Hoi An col­lect­ing items for recy­cling. Today she is sell­ing a bro­ken elec­tric bike to the recy­cling center.

“I work from 5:30 AM-10:00 AM. I have been work­ing on this job for 7 years. I used to fish on the ocean but not any­more. Work­ing like this allows me to have more time for my fam­i­ly. The income is not sta­ble some­times it can be 100k (a lit­tle over $4 USD) or a lit­tle bit more.”

“My hus­band sells lot­tery tick­ets. He tried to work con­struc­tion before but he is aller­gic to cement. He used to work on the ocean but now he has lots of phys­i­cal prob­lems. He earns less than 100k per day.”

“I find hap­pi­ness in my job, addi­tion­al­ly, I don’t have to spend a lot of mon­ey on invest­ment (open­ing a shop for example).”

Ngoc, 50 years old
Hoi An, Viet­nam
(Name changed for privacy)

Finding Ngoc in Hoi An

After tak­ing this pic­ture we caught up with her a few weeks lat­er to learn more about her life.

“You guys real­ly tried hard to find me! Thank you so much” Ngoc, says with a big smile.

We love sur­pris­ing peo­ple with lit­tle gifts like these. After tak­ing a can­did pho­to of Ngoc in Hoi An, Viet­nam, we print­ed and framed the pho­to then set out to find her again. We’d nev­er met her before but saw her a few times around the old town. While search­ing around town for her we almost gave up for the day when she sud­den­ly appeared from around a cor­ner on her bicycle.

“It’s beau­ti­ful!” She exclaimed when we gave her the photo.