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Published: March 6th 2009
Red lanterns
at the Tet market in the centre of Haiphong Tet - Lunar New Year in Vietnam
Tet is basically the same celebration as Chinese New Year, but as this is not China, it has a different name. The time of year varies depending on the moon, and this year it fell at the end of January.
The week or so running up to New Year seemed really hectic, everyone was cleaning their houses and tying up loose ends. They start decorating their houses with red decorations, which are thus for sale on every street corner. Since the New Year is the Year of the Buffalo/Ox, various Ox gifts and decorations were for sale everywhere. Have a look at the photos to see what kind of random things you could buy. The shops were mental, just like prior to Christmas, people were buying up the whole shop! Huge hampers were on sale containing lots of 'posh' products like Thai whisky, Nescafe coffee and those butter cookies that are also in the hampers we get at home. Oh, and tins of 'Arsenal' biscuits. Which have London beefeaters on the front, but I have never seen for sale in the UK. Go figure.
We later discovered that the
Peach blossom branches for sale in the streets of Haiphong
abit like Christmas trees, people inspect them to decide which one to decorate their house with hectic shopping was because most of the shops were closed for the whole Tet period, nearly 10 days! Most of the banks were shut too. Well, our bank anyway.
"Oh Tet tree, oh Tet tree, how lovely are your branches..."
People decorate their houses with trees, just like Christmas. However, here, rather than the familiar evergreen kind that drops its needles all over the carpet; they have two different types of trees. One is the kumquat tree, a small green tree covered in small orange fruit. The other is a peach blossom tree. Or the branch of one. Or the branch of a tree with fake pink blossom glue gunned on (well, January is probably a bit early for blossom in North Vietnam). Both of these trees were for sale all over the city. It was incredible watching people inspect the trees to see how many flowers/fruit they had, and then transport them home. I have many memories of going to the garden centre with my Dad to choose the Christmas tree. Browsing rows of seemingly identical trees before he chose the right one. Then strapping it to the roof of the car to take it
home and keep it in the garden. Preparing it to be decorated and realising that it was too tall for the living room and we needed to chop the top off.....
However, in Haiphong few people have cars to strap their trees to the top of. They all drive motorbikes. This didn't stop anyone. We saw so many people driving their motorbikes around with a full sized tree strapped to the back of them. Amazing.
Hoi An lantern festival
We went to Hoi An for the Tet holiday. Hoi An is famous for lanterns, many shops make paper lanterns and sell them to tourists. To celebrate Tet they had a lantern festival by the river. They made giant paper lanterns that lit up at night and floated on the river; a buffalo, a turtle and a dragon. All the businesses in the city made big paper lanterns of various designs. On the eve of Tet, there was a big festival were they released fireworks over the river and groups performed traditional Vietnamese dancing. People floated small paper boats containing candles down the river - rather like they do for the Loy Kratong festival in Thailand.
it was beautiful.
Who's the luckiest?
On our return to work, Apollo held the traditional Tet return to work party, to ensure success for the coming year. We were all presented with lucky money envelopes. Over Tet, children are presented with red envelopes by adults they know, containing a small amount of money, to wish them luck for the year. Our envelopes contained a total of 1,000 000 dong, split between all the staff. So we all got different amounts. The top amount was an 100,000 note. I don't know if it takes away the luck if you reveal how much money you got....like telling what you wish for when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake..so I won't tell you what we got. But I hope it means that we should be quite lucky this year!
So, from Vietnam
Chuc Mung Nam Moi Happy New Year!
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anonymous
non-member comment
Hi there! Oh, no. Tet is NOT the same celebration as Chinese New Year. There are some variations, so just say it is similar only. For example, in 1983 Tet was 1 month later than Chinese's. Some year recently (I don't remember exactly), it was 1 day earlier. Also, 2011 will be Year of the Cat (Chinese's: Year of the Rabbit).