Chuc Mung Nam Moi! Happy New Year!

We are having a fantastic time in Vietnam, and are now in Hoi An which is in the central coast area. It's gorgeous here and is actually a UNESCO world heritage site due to the Chinese influenced houses and buildings in the old town. We're having an awesome time just wandering around looking at them and taking some photos.

Today is Tet, which is the biggest day of the year for the Vietnamese. It's a celebration of the first day of their New Year and everyone's birthday (they don't have individual birthdays as we do in western countries). People pay off all of their debts and paint their houses, honor their dead relatives (and include them in the festivities as guests), they all wear new clothes and have special festive food with their families. Red is a lucky colour for them, and we have heard lots of stories from travellers saying that some people were giving away cans of coke, 10 000 dong notes and other red items as a way of getting good luck.
The oddest part of Tet however, is that everyone has their birthday on the same day, which is a cause for great celebration but can also be quite bizarre. For example, if a baby was born one day before Tet, then the next day it would actually be considered a two year old. This is because it is counted as one year in the womb (even though, as we all know, you're only in there for 9 months... I guess they don't really worry about the other unaccounted for 3 months) and then the next day is Tet, when it's everyone's birthday!!

We are staying in a beautiful little guest house called Minh Ah Ancient Guest House, right next to the markets (which are closed today & tomorrow for Tet), and it's a really old Chinese style house.
On the first day of the new year, it's very important for each Vietnamese family to invite people who are wealthy, healthy and influential into their homes as it is thought that they will bring good luck to the home for the coming year.
So it was a real honor to be the first people officially invited by the owners of the guest house to share their first meal of the new year. The traditional festive breakfast included: sticky rice that you added crushed nuts and sugar to; a solid sticky rice and green bean concoction that had been steamed for 20 hours in a rolled up banana leaf that you ate with pickled vegetables and chillies; a sponge cake (baked by their grandmother); little biscuits with meat in them and lots of ginger tea. At the end of the meal they brought out some candied coconut and ginger pieces, and some little red sticky balls of shredded ginger and lemon (very good) and chocolates.

For the rest of the day, we wandered around the little town taking photos and calling out "Chuc Mung Nam Moi!" (pronounced 'chook moong nam moy') to every Vietnamese person that walked or rode past and watch their faces split into a huge grin. We had to stop calling out to people on bicycles though, as we almost caused a couple of accidents as the cyclist would whip their heads around in our direction and then narrowly miss cycling into an oncoming moto.
It was also really nice seeing whole families all dressed up in their new clothes - often all on the back of the same moto - on their way to some Tet commitment or another.

Later on that night, we caught up with our mates from Adelaide for dinner and drinks at a couple of cheap joints around town... all in all a great day. :)