Tens of thousands of people are leaving Ho Chi Minh City to travel home for Tet (Lunar New Year) celebration per day. It is expected that a total of one million people will join this mass migration, transport experts estimated. Over the past several days, people have left the city in crowds by road, rail and air; and the numbers of passengers at coach stations, the Saigon Railway Station, and the Tan Son Nhat Airport are increasing day after day.   Yesterday, January 24, about 40,000 people left the Eastern Coach Station, twice as many as that on a normal day previously, said Nguyen Ngoc Thua, the station’s director. Meanwhile, the Western Coach Station served 24,000 passengers the same day, about 3,000 people higher than before. The station expects the number of passengers will rise to 55,000 per day during the two days before Tet, which will fall on January 31. According to the Saigon Transportation Mechanical Corporation, all the four coach stations of the city – including the two above-mentioned ones and two others, Nga Tu Ga and An Suong – will serve about 800,000 passengers in total during Tet.

The Saigon Railway Station and Tan Son Nhat Airport have also been crowded with numerous passengers over the past several days. The railway station’s head, Nguyen Van Thanh, said the facility expects to transport a total of 160,000 passengers during Tet, with 16-17 trains operating per day.

During the past few days, the railway terminal received about 1,000 passengers at one-hour intervals, Thanh said.

Meanwhile, the number of passengers handled by the airport has increased from the 13,000-14,000 on normal days to 21,000 on recent days, a representative of the airport said.

According to the passenger lists, the number of passengers at the airport will increase to 31,000 on January 27, the representative said.