New Year

The new years celebrations were a lot of fun ! There were huge fireworks and everybody was out in the street on their motorbikes. People kept arriving from all directions to the spot of the fireworks. Just after it had finished everybody started the engine and drove away.. they had their helmets on for the whole time and most of them stayed seated on the motorbike.. It was a kind of "drive through firework". ;-) This provoked some kind of traffic jam for at least 10 to 15 minutes until everybody got away.


Already in the afternoon, I had witnessed a traffic jam in the street where they sell the new years trees and flowers as everybody just stopped on the sides and then buses and other motorbikes just got stuck. I was just standing there and observing this for around 30 minutes and taking some photos. It was really funny: mostly men were buying the flowers and trees, but were not so sure which ones to buy and the women selliing the trees and flowers kept talking to them without a brak trying to convinve to by bigger and more... ;-) they tried to put several trees on the bike, rearranged, put them back on the floor, called some relatives that arrived several minutes later with another bike to help out. I enjoyed this a lot !! It was a real chaos !!

The beach I went to yesterday afternoon was really beautiful. Not many people were there and I walked for more than 2 hours. Unfortunately they keep building these hotel resorts, which are all half empty because there are not that may tourists here.. so it does not really make sense to buiild even more of them.. When I was sitting on the beach watching the sea, I was quite surprised to see an ELEPHANT walking by. Together with his owner, they were having a nice walk along the beach and definetely having fun. The elephant seemed however to be scared of the water (quite surprisingly.. as usually they love to play with water and have a bath.. but probably it is because of the salt water) .. he almost jumped back each time the water was getting too close.

About new year. There was some confusion about the year of the rat, as here they put mice on the walls and I saw several times written "year of the mouse". First I thought it was a wrong translation for rat and thought this was funny. I researched a little bit and found out that both are possible as the Chinese sign 鼠 means both rat and mouse. And it it true that "mouse" is a little bit nicer than "rat"... ;-)


In the restaurant where I had dinner, I met a local English teacher and translator, Mr Pham Phu Dung, with whom I chatted a little bit and who then invited me for today to his family home. It is a tradition that families invite somebody to come to their house as the first person entering the home on the first day of the new year brings luck for the new year. Normally it is an honourable man with several children (that's what the Lonely Planet says..) And it seems to be a big honour as a foreigner to be invited to someone's house. So I try to live up to the expectations. I will buy some red flowers as white and yellow flowers are only given as a religious offering or to the dead... it is always good to read the guidebook in detail: always a source of knowledge !! I have to admit that when I read this I thought that this was pretty useless as I would certainly not get the opportunity to be invited and to have to offer flowers.. but I was wrong..

Together with an English girl I met also in the restaurant, we went around town, played some of the local games at the stalls set up along the streets and had some drinks. After the fireworks, we went dancing, but it was mostly westerners around because the vietnamese go the pagoda to pray right after midnight.. only at about 2 they started coming back. We partied until 4 in the morning...