Tet in Saigon

Tet is the Chinese lunar calendar new year. This year, the lunar new year is January 26th which begins the year of the ox. It is THE annual celebration in Vietnam and most Vietnamese have a 3-day holiday January 26th through 28th. All government offices (normally open 7 days a week - common in communist countries where no religions are recognized), banks, and shops are closed.
I had to quickly discover/learn many Vietnamese Tet customs and traditions.
The week before Tet, the streets are all decorated with lights and shoppers. Custom dictates that all Vietnamese (rich, poor, and everyone in between) buy new clothes just before the new year. Another tradition is to clean everything from top to bottom - houses (inside and out), motorbikes, bicycles - EVERYthing should and is expected to be spotless when the new year arrives!

Saigon streets' Tet light decorations. Most Tet decorations have a flower theme. The overhead lights in pic 291 are yellow lotus flowers. Sorry that these pics are so crappy - but the ole BB doesn't take very good night shots.

Most Vietnamese have Tet eve dinner at home with immediate family. Linh's family invited me to join them. As always at their house, the meal was comprised of delicious traditional dishes - about 8 of them! My BB camera was very temperamental that evening - so this pic stinks - but it is the only one I have of the occasion and I was not going to delete it.

Fortunately, before going to Tet eve dinner, I consulted my cultural advisors (hotel staff that know me) re Vietnamese Tet eve traditions. They explained that as a Tet eve dinner guest, I was expected to take flowers as a gift to the male head of household. Because Vinh Pham is from Hanoi (north), the appropriate "flower" would be something called Hoa Dao. When Vinh picked me up, I asked him to stop at one of many street vendors selling flowers and trees. He was elated when he discovered what I wanted to do and proceeded to select and negotiate the price for a potted Hoa Dao tree. This is a pic of me and him with Hoa Dao tree in background. Btw - he negotiated a really good deal!

After dinner, Vinh invited me to be the first person to visit his home the next day - new year's day - for breakfast. I agreed and later learned that it is a Vietnamese suspicion that the 1st person in the year to visit your house is responsible for bringing your household good (or bad) luck the rest of the year! Evidently many Vietnamese, including Vinh, take this very seriously and carefully select and invite the first visitors of the year to their house. I was told (by my cultural advisors) that this was a great honor. So I arranged for my motorbike driver to pick me up the next morning and drive me to the Pham's house. I also brought "lucky money" in a red envelop for "Dragon Boy" - Linh's young brother <-- another tradition my cultural advisors explained to me. I arrived at the Pham's house precisely at the requested time - 10AM. Before eating breakfast, Linh's dad asked me to "go upstairs" with the family - I dutifully followed them not having any idea what was happening. We went into Linh's dad's/mother's bedroom where a tasteful "shrine" to Linh's dad's deceased dad, grandfather and great grandfather (with framed pics of each) was on a dresser. In front of the pics were a considerable number of plates of food - what ended up being "our" delicious 5-course breakfast. We each lit incense sticks and placed them in a jar in front of the pictures. The traditional Tet breakfast is always first offered to the fraternal ancestors - before it is consumed by the living. <-- this is all something Linh explained to me afterwards. After a delicious breakfast at Linh's house, I was unexpectedly invited to join them while they visited there relatives in Saigon - another Tet tradition. I was surprised and honored to be invited to such a personal activity. The first and eldest family member is always visited first - in this case it was Linh's maternal grandmother whose house was already packed with other family members already when we arrived. This is a pic of me with some of them (grandmother is only woman seated - in left of pic). The dogs were great - "Phu Quoc" pure breds with hair on their backs like Rhodesian Ridgebacks!

We left the grandmother's house (12 in total) and went to her favorite Buddhist pagoda to give thanks and request a happy/prosperous new year - a traditional new year's day custom. This is a pic of me and some of the family members at the pagoda. Vinh, Linh's father, did not enter the pagoda grounds - being from Hanoi where he was born and raised, he is not a religious man at all. Conversely, Linh's mother's family are from central and south Vietnam and practice Buddhism.

We visited 2 more sets of family members (with mountains of food at each stop) and then Vinh drove me back to my hotel. What I thought was going to be a 1-2 hour breakfast ended up being an all day set familiar events of which I was a very honored guest. Truly a wonderful family and memorable day.

After a long Tet new year's day, Linh's father invited me to go to Vung Tau with him and his son aka "Dragon Boy". It appeared that this was something he and his son enjoyed doing "away and freedom from the women". Again, I was honored - even if for only 2 days and 1 nite at considerable expense (we hired a car and driver to take us).
Btw - Vung Tau is the real "China Beach" located about 75 miles from Saigon on the South China Sea. Sounds like a short distance but it was almost a 3-hour trip in a car! The last time I was in Vung Tau was 1967 on a 2-day-in-country R&R during the war. It is very different today from what I remember.



I had befriended "Dragon Boy" during the past few months. What was different in Vung Tau was that he and I spent considerable time together with and without his father present. Dragon Boy's English is almost as limited as my Vietnamese - forcing us each to communicate in the other's native language. As a result, we both increased our vocabularies in the other's language. He is a great as well as very patient and demanding teacher.

Chuc Mung nam moi - Happy New Year - the year of the ox!