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Our first week in Vietnam was spent in Hanoi. The good and the bad of it was that we came at Tet, the lunar new year celebrated by most east Asians.  For Americans and many Europeans Tet has a connotation of war, as it was made famous by the Vietcong assault on Hue in 1968. But for Vietnamese it is a family time that combines Christmas, New Years, and Mothers day.

The good was that we got to see it; the bad was that the country shuts down and eating, banking, and especially travelling become difficult. Before arrival we knew this and had decided to stay in Hanoi until Tet was over. Our mistake was in thinking Tet was a 3-5 day celebration when in fact it lasts about 10 days.

Tet Holiday Decorations

We arrived a couple of days before the Tet holiday and preparations were in full swing. Above you can appreciate some of the bustle that filled the streets, with vendors selling holiday decorations competing with motor-bike commuters, rickshaw cycles, and tourists like us. Everyone was buying the traditional decorations: a branch of peach blossom...

A Traditional Tet Goodluck Charm

Everyone wanted to have certain things to bring good luck in the year that was about to start. One of them was a healthy branch of peach that was filled with buds and just ready to be force-bloomed and welcome in the year in a riot of pink.

Another Tet Must-have

The other must-have item was a tangerine tree. We often chuckled at the sight of cyclists riding home with precariously balanced trees on their back carrier. But they did look wonderful and were essential in the same way that Christmas trees are in the west.

Vietnamese New Year's Eve, Hanoi

And finally the day of celebration arrived and out we went to celebrate with the rest of Hanoi's citizens. It was a very good-natured celebration with almost no drunkenness or rowdiness that we could see. The evening's climax was a firework show over the lake near our hotel that gave us stiff necks for two days afterwards, but was well worth it.