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Let’s welcome Year of Dog to Vietnam!

Let’s welcome Year of Dog to Vietnam!

Friday, February 16, 2018, 09:55 GMT+7

Hungover? Reading this after sleeping all day? Did you meet someone fabulous on Lunar New Year’s Eve? Great! And for all the rest of you who celebrated quietly at home…well done!

So what comes next? Visiting! But wait…hang on…it’s not as simple as that!

From the first day of Tet, it’s the custom to go around and visit family and friends. This is probably more common in the countryside as folks live closer together in the villages and relatives are often in the same village. In the modern style, a lot of Vietnamese do this and then head off on a quick trip or holiday – depending on their income and means of transport – before kicking off the working year.

Again, the idea of ‘luck’ plays a strong part in the arrangements. The first visitor of the New Year should ideally be someone of good character who’s successful in life – so the black sheep of the family who’s always borrowing money for football betting has to wait his turn! As this is a good start to the year, it’s hoped that good luck will continue to flow into the household. So if the whole of the first day is full of wonderful events, the rest of the year will be fantastic too! This particular tradition is fairly important and it’s called xông đất or xông nhà.

This lunar year is believed to be governed by the dog. Photo: Tuoi Tre
This lunar year is believed to be governed by the dog. Photo: Tuoi Tre

If you’re invited on the first day, it’s a great honor so don’t wear shorts, thongs or forget the gifts!

Next on the visiting list are family relatives, naturally from the eldest to the youngest. After that, there are friends on the second day and quite often teachers on the third day. Of course, that has nothing to do with getting good marks later on!

So if you’re thinking of visiting, better to contact them first to avoid an embarrassing social faux pas!

The Buddhist temples get a workout from worshippers praying to the gods for luck and to their ancestors. A popular activity at the temples is to get your fortune told, particularly for young adults hoping for good jobs, great school results and love!

With the locals busy with visiting, eating and relaxing, it’s not a good time to travel as a lot of cafés, banks, and some motorbike repair shops are all closed! It’s also more expensive for accommodation and food. Prices can skyrocket so check before you order anything. Café rip-offs hit the locals and tourists in some towns too.

If you’re a foreigner, be careful around the festival and temple events, the crowds are like ‘black Friday’ shopping days in Western countries. Even little Hoi An is jammed with people and generally I don’t ride the motorbike at night during the holiday as it’s far worse than normal. This is also aggravated by the large number of people driving cars and motorbikes from out-of-town who don’t know the streets and unexpectedly stop or U- turn with little or no warning. 

Wrapping banh chung and banh tet, all traditional Vietnamese cakes, is a custom during the Lunar New Year in Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre
Wrapping banh chung and banh tet, all traditional Vietnamese cakes, is a custom during the Lunar New Year in Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The beaches are crowded too but that there’s always a place for foreigners to hang out without too much discomfort. Given the recent remarkably cold weather in February, this is the place to be! Personally I love watching the Vietnamese have fun at the beach, it’s so innocent, there’s no real showing off in the Western ‘look at me, I’m so cool’ fashion and the happiness in the air is infectious.

I do recommend taking a stroll around the neighborhood and checking out how people have decorated their front porches with fruit trees and flowers and lantern lights. There’s a quiet sense of magic in all that glitter and peacefulness.

The Year of the Dog should be good. I’m an ‘earth dog’ which means I’ll have a better year than the metal or fire dogs. Generally it’s predicted to be a prosperous year that’s stable and happy. Although we can never tell what’s next in the big, wide mad world, I’d like to wish everyone reading a very fabulous and memorable year in which you receive all the good things you deserve in life!

So relax over Tet, don’t worry about the future and Woof, woof!

Stivi Cooke / Tuoi Tre News Contributor

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