While most people celebrate Tet in the coziness of their homes with their loved ones, some people must work to make sure everyone else can enjoy the holiday.

On the Nguyen Hue flower street in District 1 in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Pham Minh Tri, 27, and his wife, who is six months pregnant, stand out from the crowd because of  their clown costumes.

The couple blows balloons, twists them into animal shapes, and sells them at low prices to kids at the festival.

Fond of children, Tri was set on learning how to make animal-shaped balloons. He began to do so on Nguyen Hue during Tet last year.

During last year’s Tet, as he had no time to go out with his girlfriend, Nguyen Ha Thanh Nguyen, he asked her to watch him blow up balloons at the flower fest. Unexpectedly, Nguyen joined him and also took great delight in the job.

Despite Nguyen’s pregnancy, the couple were present each day at the seven-day flower fest, including lunar new year’s eve on Jan 30.

They have to make the best of their creativity to create balloons in as many animal shapes as possible to cater to the kids’ diverse requests.

“Though we don’t celebrate Tet with our loved ones in our hometown or stroll around the festival, we’re really happy to see the kids waiting eagerly for our balloons,” Tri shared.

Tri was preparing for a free balloon and magic performance for the young patients at the HCMC Oncology Hospital whose families couldn’t afford a trip back home for Tet.

By 6pm on the Lunar New Year’s Eve (Jan 30), trash was strewn across many HCMC streets. By 10pm, with the sanitation workers’ hard work, the streets were all cleaned, ready to usher in the lunar new year.

One of the workers is 28-year-old Nguyen Duy Khanh, of the HCMC Urban Environment Co. This is the 7th year he has celebrated lunar new year’s eve with his coworkers beside their overloaded garbage trucks.

“I’m used to that. My parents also worked this job for dozens of years and just retired. As a child, I would feel upset that my parents didn’t come home and celebrate the eve with me like my friends’ parents. I sympathized with them as soon as I began working at the company,” Khanh shared.

After his shift on the eve, he and his wife, also a sanitation worker at the same company, rode some 20 km back home, where their two young kids were sleeping soundly. All they could do was go to bed before starting their new shift at 1pm on the first day of Tet.

The doctors, nurses, and phone operators at the 175 Army Hospital were also on duty during Tet.

As in previous years, senior lieutenant Han Duc Vinh, 35, and some of his colleagues, who work as the hospital’s phone operators, took turns taking the 24-hour Tet shifts for several consecutive days.

Their job is to dispatch medical emergency information and make sure that the emergency cases are handled promptly.

Vinh and the hospital staff joined a simple Tet celebration at the office to ease their homesickness.