Some 10,000 visitors and pilgrims thronged at a major springtime festival in northern Vietnam on Wednesday, with many scrambling for lucky tokens and causing great mayhem.

A major festival called the “Tran Temple Seal Opening,” which is organized annually in Nam Dinh, the capital city of the eponymous province in the north, began yesterday evening and lingers on until the end of the first lunar month.

Though the rituals to open the royal seal did not begin until 11:15 pm, several thousand pilgrims and visitors were flocking in and around the temple hours before, waiting anxiously for papers with the seal prints, which are traditionally believed to bring their owners good luck for the entire lunar year.

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