[jackbl]

Just celebrate Tet as Vietnamese do
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This is my 6th Tet. I think I prefer Tet to Christmas since Tet is more about family with less emphasis on consumerism. I have learned in Vietnam, family is very important. Western culture is much more individualized as people spend more time with friends than they do with their family.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, I usually go to my Vietnamese wife’s family around Binh Thanh district in Ho Chi Minh City to visit her mom, uncles and aunts as well as give li xi (lucky money) to children. My favorite Tet food is thit heo kho trung (pork cooked with eggs). We also go to pagoda during Tet for praying. For foreigners, they can see Vietnamese tradition from different aspects through Tet.

But I find many expats in Vietnam do not like Tet. Many foreigners I know tell me that they don’t celebrate Tet, they travel to Thailand or Cambodia for vacation instead. I understand Tet is very boring for them but then many are not married into a Vietnamese family. In my opinion, if a foreigner weds a local and want to stay here for a long time, they have to adapt to the local culture to fully appreciate living here. As for me, the weather, the food, and the people keep me stay in the country.

I traveled a lot of countries and I found that Vietnamese has an interesting culture. I like the Vietnamese history and tradition and of course I like to learn about Tet. I’m trying to learn Vietnamese customs and practices like cúng ông táo (Kitchen God worshipping ceremony) through bilingual books I’ve bought from bookstores in the downtown city.

In my experience, the best place to play during Tet is Ho Chi Minh City where you can visit Pham Ngu Lao spring flower market or Nguyen Hue flower street. But I have a feeling that Tet festivals in the city are getting smaller as the years go by such as the flower show on Nguyen Hue Boulevard. As far as I know people these days flock to district 7 to visit flower shows more than district 1. I spent my first Tet in Hanoi – my mother-in-law’s hometown - and I found that Tet in Hanoi was not as exciting. Hanoi is very quite during Tet as most restaurants and shops are closed while many local people stay in their house.