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Published: February 21st 2007
The Dragon Parade
Just because its the Year of the Pig, doesn't mean there's no place for Dragons!My first authentic Chinese New Year - Vietnam style, known here as Tet, and a big pain in the ass to anyone who doesn't live here. New Years Eve was full of festivities, complete with a dragon parade, concerts, trapeze artists and fire works, lots of cheap beer was consumed (8 beer for $1)!, but it was about as weak as it comes! I even managed to get interviewed by the News in Hanoi, who knows how that turned out, I wonder if I got dubbed?... After that, Hanoi turned into a ghost town, it was a challenge just trying to find some food! I joined a couple Aussie's (Lauren and Ben) and a couple of Canadians (Brian and Greg) for a Halong Bay tour that would get us out of Tet for a couple of days anyway.
However, Tet also stands for the biggest excuse for tours that get fu#%ed up! My train tickets to Sapa that got booked, never actually got booked, and our Halong Bay tour that was supposed to include sleeping on the Junk (big boat), 2 hours of kayaking, swimming etc, came complete with twice as many people as promised (aka we were herded into
Kirsty and I on New Years Eve
I joined up with the Aussie girl I met in Saigon again in Hanoi. This is us on New Years Eve, in our new Hoi An tailored shirts! a hotel on Cat Ba island), 20 minutes of kayaking - just long enough to get in the boat and get back out, no swimming, dog sh!t on deck and broken deck furniture. We were all fairly aggrivated by this, but still had a really good time, drinking a $2 twixer of rice vodka and cheap local wine. The trip back to Hanoi the next day was long and painful, leaving me quite unable to cope with the onslaught of honking horns, which are the only things that don't seem to rest on Tet!
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