An annual flower street in Ho Chi Minh City will stay open for a longer time during the upcoming Lunar New Year festival in order to welcome more visitors.

Themed “Ho Chi Minh City – Peace, Integration and Development,” the Nguyen Hue Flower Street will open at 7:00 pm on February 5 and close at 10:00 pm on February 12 – or it lasts from the 27th day of the final lunar month to the fifth day of the Lunar New Year.

The event closed on the fourth day in previous years. Flowers are arranged in different shapes on the street every year to celebrate the Lunar New Year, or Tet in Vietnamese.

The traditional venue is Nguyen Hue, a street which has been turned into a promenade in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, so the flower street has been named after it.

Vietnam’s Lunar New Year falls on February 8 but festive preparations and celebrations are customarily expected to go on one week before and after that date.

According to Tran Hung Viet, director of Saigontourist, which is the organizer, the street will be embellished with more flowers and ornaments to please visitors.

Flowers for the street have been gathered from several places across the country, including Da Lat City in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, Tien Giang Province and Dong Thap Province in the Mekong Delta, and Ho Chi Minh City.

The street, which will stretch 720 meters from Le Thanh Ton Street to Ton Duc Thang Street, is expected to welcome over one million visitors, Viet said.

The Nguyen Hue Flower Street has been held annually since 2004.

The street has grown into one of the city’s fixtures during Tet – the Southeast Asian country’s largest traditional holiday – and receives millions of tourists, including foreigners, each year.

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