TET New Year Celebration  

We didn’t intentionally plan this, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn that we would be visiting Ho Chi Minh City during their biggest and most celebrated holiday of the year, called the TET Holiday (the year of the Rat!). We had a hotel booked for the 4 days but since we arrived a day early we were fortunate that our hotel had a room for that night as well.

The TET Holiday celebration could be described as a combination of our Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day and Easter all rolled into one holiday which lasts from 5-7 days. Many tourists either avoid the city or are excited to be here during the celebration. We didn’t have a clue of what to expect! We decided to join in the celebration since we had ‘celebrating experience’ from Australia Day with the Aussies a few days earlier. The city was “all decked out” with very colorful decorations, live music and a massive fireworks display at the stroke of midnight. We ventured out around 9:30 pm and headed toward the center of the city along the Saigon River.

This is usually only a 10 minute walk from the hotel but it took us over an hour to find a suitable location to wait until midnight. There were people everywhere enjoying the ambiance and festivities. Most Vietnamese visit their families during this holiday and businesses are closed so they can participate in the festivities. There were activities everywhere! All of the most popular Viet Nam entertainers were performing live on stage which was set up on the main street. Balloons, flowers, lights, food stalls, families, children, people on motorbikes, congestion, traffic jams --- it was all so incredible to experience. We’ve never seen such a swarm of mopeds coming into a city for a celebration. At times, we had to hold on to each other so we wouldn’t get separated. It was truly amazing to see that everyone was calm (no alcohol) and their main focus was to just enjoy the ambiance. The main center area was blocked to traffic so the motor bikes had to be parked somewhere. Since there are very few parking lots, you can imagine that the mopeds were parked everywhere --- mostly parked on sidewalks. Navigating through the hordes of people and parked mopeds was quite an obstacle to overcome. However, crossing intersections with motorbikes traveling in all directions and trying to find a sidewalk clear of motorbikes was even more challenging. The whole experience was something we will never forget! We learned that the ratio of people in Saigon to motorbikes in this city is almost 2 to 1, 8 million people to 3.5 million motorbikes. This ratio is remarkable but adding to the craziness is the fact that there are few traffic lights or stop signs! Seeing 3-4 people on a single motorbike in hordes of 70 – 100 at an intersection is now the norm!

The fireworks show was incredible and went on for over 15 minutes. It was now time to navigate our way back to the hotel , which proved to be more difficult since everyone was now leaving. It was a truly amazing experience that could not be captured in a picture. We made our way back to our hotel safely and were anxious for a cold beer (it was 1:00 am and 80 degrees)! Our hotel staff greeted us and were already in the midst of a party with beer and Champaign (yes, they were also drinking) in the hotel lobby and invited us to join them. Duh!! – of course we did. We even received a small gift from the staff (5,000 Dong or about 33 cents) which we were told would to bring us fortune in the New Year.

Happy New Year from Viet Nam!

Where’s Pat and Mike