Celebrating Tet

Tet has been a fun time to be in Saigon. Although most of the tourist sites, (museums, e.g.) are closed for a few days, we're getting to experience a festive, energetic, exciting part of Vietnamese culture. On Saturday--Tet eve--we were walking through a local neighborhood and a busload of performers pulled up and leaped into the traditional dragon dance-- see the pictures below. Saturday night at midnight there were fireworks in 4 parts of town. We stood on our hotel room balcony and watched 2 of them. Yesterday, New Year's, we started out our own celebration at a restaurant that features traditional Vietnamese food from Hue--and Dutch specialties. Turns out the owners' husband is Dutch. Actually they only have 2 Dutch specialties--one is hutspot, the other is Dutch "springballs," which were croquettes, the traditional Dutch New Year's food. So of course we had a batch--very tasty, although not quite measuring up to the Witte Brothers quality. There was also a dragon dance at our hotel, followed by folk games. Len played a gambling game and won 8000 dong! Then in the afternoon we went to the downtown area. A large boulevard was filled for about 1/2 mile with a gorgeous flower show, including demonstrations of folk crafts--basketweaving, tapestry weaving, folk music, etc. It was thronged with Vietnamese families parading along on their best clothes--lots of them taking family photos. Except for the hotel event none of these were tourist-oriented events, which makes them so much more authentic and enjoyable.