Vietnam uses the lunar calendar, so the Tet holiday changes every year. The first event of the Tet holiday is New Years Eve, which this year is on January 27. This will be the year of the rooster so there are lots of big mylar rooster balloons for sale.
The excitement in our neighborhood has been building for days. We've had rain for the past several days until yesterday, when the sun came out. There is an increasing number of kids playing in our street, and everyone seems to be looking forward to the new year. Our street has become more active and much more interesting!
The sidewalks are filled with drying laundry and scrubbed furniture – it seems everyone is working up a storm, getting in their last minute cleaning before Tet. It's bad luck to sweep during Tet (you could sweep the good luck out of the house and have bad luck for the entire next year), so after tonight, that's it for at least the next three days. The people who live here are very industrious and very clean – the women always seem to be out sweeping, cooking, and doing laundry.
Many along our street burn paper, fake money, and other things throughout the day, sending “gifts” to their ancestors. From what we have been able to learn, most people don't believe in this as much as they used to in the old days, but it's still a traditional sign of respect – similar to us placing flowers on a relative's grave. We have to monitor the burn rate to decide when to open or close our front doors to keep the ash and smoke out of the house.
Many along our street burn paper, fake money, and other things throughout the day, sending “gifts” to their ancestors. From what we have been able to learn, most people don't believe in this as much as they used to in the old days, but it's still a traditional sign of respect – similar to us placing flowers on a relative's grave. We have to monitor the burn rate to decide when to open or close our front doors to keep the ash and smoke out of the house.
Every house along our street seems to have guests. This evening before the festivities, a guest of one of our across-the-street neighbors killed, scalded, plucked, and butchered a chicken on the sidewalk in front of their house.
The kumquat trees, chrysanthemums, and other flowering plants are in full bloom, and tonight and for the next three days we expect to see everyone in their finest.
New, brightly colored clothes seem to be the order of the day. Tradition dictates that everyone has new clothes for Tet so everyone looks really spiffy (except us!). Dark clothes, especially black and white, symbolize bad luck. Don't feed anyone duck or squid – the duck is a stupid animal and has dark (unlucky) meat. The squid emits ink, also dark, and therefore, unlucky. We are on our best behaviour, trying to make sure we don't offend anyone as we participate in this, the biggest holiday of the Vietnamese year.--- Two days later
It's strange to look out onto our street and not see at least someone sweeping. Before Tet, it was a pretty much constant activity – we could walk down our street any time of day and see several people sweeping. Now, during Tet, there's not a broom to be seen.
One of many Tet traditions is that of giving small children lucky money (“Li Xi”) in a red envelope on the first day of Lunar New Year. Our landlady, who lives next door to us, has had several grandchildren visiting. They seem very interested in us, and, when they first arrived, reached out over the fence between the houses for us to give them lucky money. Unfortunately, we weren't very well prepared, and their parents stopped them and apologized for their forwardness before we could give them any.
Another tradition is making and eating “Bánh tét”, or as we call it “green log”. Our neighbor across the street turned her sidewalk into a bánh tét factory for a few days before Tet. Big tubs of rice and soybeans, lots of soaking, lots of rinsing, lots of pork slicing, and lots of wrapping and tying in banana leaves, resulted in a dining room table that was stacked full
of green logs. There was a pretty much constant stream of people coming to buy them, so Julie & Marg went over and bought one for us. We boiled it for several hours, sliced it, added soy sauce and chili sauce, and found it to be delicious. Here's a link with more information.
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| The ubiquitous food cart. |
Walking around the neighbourhoods we've seen families sitting together playing card games, everyone seems to participate and they all seem to be having lots of fun.
Almost every marketplace and shop, and many restaurants are closed. As a result, we've had to eat out for the last 2 days as we were nearly out of food. Not such a hardship, however, as meals usually cost between $1 and $5. Mr. Hi (pronounced “hee”) and his wife Tao (pronounced like Taos, New Mexico without the “s”)” at “Hi's Restaurant” have kept us well fed with inexpensive and really delicious meals. And the best part is that they're only about half a block from our house!
We didn't get to see these folks perform on New Years Eve, but we did get to see them practice a few days before. We especially enjoyed their choice of music.
Today we walked over to Cam Nam, the next island down river from us. Two little boys all dressed up for Tet, did a little “Hello” dance for us. Unfortunately, we only caught he last few seconds of it on camera so we can't share most of it with you, but you get the idea - it involved a lot of jumping and yelling "Hello!"
