Chúc Mừng Năm Mới=Happy Lunar New Year!
It's 2011 and the Tết, or Lunar New Year festivities are (supposedly) officially over. Lights and decorations have been taken down (except ours, we intend to leave up the Christmas tree until June, since we have no where to store it). I told a woman happy new year in Vietnamese and she responded with a quick, "Hết Rồi!" =Everything is over!
Stores and restaurants are reopening, people are returning from their hometowns, and we have been teaching for 3 days already!
During Tết, real flowers are replaced with these fake ones for decorations. I have no idea why, except that it's probably just tradition. Some of them are pretty, but no one need buy me any.
I love Tết. I do. I love the decorations and the holiday from work, and all of the traditions that are so uniquely Vietnamese. It can, however, be very stressful as we are invited to various homes where our behavior may, traditionally, bring them good luck or bad luck for the entire next year. Children expect red envelopes filled with money, and even my colleauges asked for them this year. The traditional Tết cake (congealed rice filled with bananas or pork) is often given as gifts and last year I ate more than my fill. I love Tết. But I didn't expect to suffer from missing it either.
I did escape Tết in Thailand this year (pictures to follow), but they just call their Lunar New Year celebrations 'สวัสดีปีใหม่' so I actually wasn't missing out at all (I just couldn't read that).
I'm not sure what it did for my culture shock to be in Thailand, but I found myself pretty ticked off that everyone in Thailand speaks Thai. I just hadn't considered that fact. Surely somone would speak Vietnamese or exchange my Vietnamese money (nope). When did I lose all of my common sense? It was a completely different country with a completely different culture. I should NOT have been shocked by this.
Flying back into the Sài Gòn airport made me feel back in my element, like I knew what was going on again, and everything would be better. I was welcomed back by several aggressive families cutting in front of me for a taxi, and I felt reassured that I hadn't become too pushy from living here, and disappointed that I'm still not pushy enough to get the best taxi company (obviously mixed feelings).
I walked a ways a caught a xe ôm, or matorbike taxi, who charged me nearly double for the ride home with the excuse that it was the new year. He asked me to give him a red envelope with lucky money, told me that at 25 I should have 2 kids by now, and said that coincidently he doesn't have a girlfriend. Welcome back to a New Lunar New Year, where everything is still the same, except the prices.
At the risk of coming off complainy again, I do still love Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. I am sick and moderately upset at how bad Vietnamese cough drops taste (they were made in Thailand though). So now is a good time to blog, while I drink tea and eat tangerines like it's my job.
It's the year of the Cat here and the decorations were elaborate and incredible. It is definitely one of their talents here (along with landscaping). These trees with yellow buds were everywhere and the red envelopes for lucky money hung from them.
