New Year's Eve- daytime
Tet is the Vietnamese equivalent of Chinese New Year. It happens on the new moon of the first month of the lunar new year. That happened to be 14 February this year. (Valentine's Day!) New Year's Eve was on Saturday and I had heard a lot about New Year's Eve and the Tet celebrations, so I had to find out for myself.
On Saturday morning I went into the city to check out the scene. I went to the Backpacker area and a market that is lots of fun. The market was packed and the traffic was crazy! Loads of impromptu stalls set up selling flowers, Tet charms, and fruit especially for the big celebrations were everywhere!
New Year's Eve-nighttime
At about 11:30, I decided that I was awake and curious enough to check out the BIG Tet festivities downtown. I had heard that there would be fireworks and flowers and displays. Would I be able to find them? Are you kidding? I took a taxi from the house over to District 1 and got as close as I could to the river, where the fireworks would be set off. I say "as close as" because I could only get about 6 blocks away..the roads were packed solid! I got out and walked the rest of the way towards a road that goes right up to the river.
Following the fireworks, I decided to stick around for a bit and see what the decorations and stuff were. On LeLoi street there were tons of beautiful lights and displays. Down on Nguyen Hue street there were amazing flower displays, but I stopped a little ways down once I realized I had lost my small camera case. Bummer.
New Year's Day
I woke up kind of early on Sunday and went for my usual bike ride. The traffic was thin, even for Sunday at 6 a.m. I did a couple of laps around the Industrial park, which sounds much worse than it is, and then made my way through District 4 and into District 1. I stopped at the flowers display on Nguyen Hue, and then rode through the traffic circle at Ben Thanh (woohoo!) over to Sozo for breakfast. It was a great way to spend my first morning of the Year of the Tiger! Grrr!
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