Planning for a vacation part 1 ...

The last few years, my wife and I spent our vacations during the Lunar New Year month in Viet Nam.

It's very hard to explain the joyfulness, and the happiness of the love ones back home when they all come to the airport to pick us up. We jokingly call this "the packages receiving day".

We always bring home gifts, and stuffs for everyone. The contents are good enough for two boxes weigh more than a hundred pounds. But no matter how carefully we plan it, there will be something missing after we get there.

Our vacations usually last for a bout a month, not counting the travel times.

The two weeks before New Year are the best. Everybody seems to slow down tremendously. Vietnamese people plan to celebrate their New Year in a big way. Believe it or not, from rich to poor, from young to old, from big honchos to low level workers, everyone would take at least a week off to celebrate the tradition January-month-off-for-the-New-Year party.

Businesses either close down or slow down. Ten day to a week before New Year, Sai Gon's population drops to a half, because people flock here for the abundant work during the year, from all over the country start to go back to their root villages to share their New Year celebration with their love ones as well. And this number is huge. It could be more than thirty percent of Sai Gon's population, roughly anywhere between three to five millions depend on which survey you are looking at.

People start cleaning their house thoroughly. After that, they start fixing, wall painting, and decorating every things from the kitchen to the main room in front. The job could take a few days. They only do it once a year, that's why.

The women have to go buying and stocking up enough food, and drink (alcohol and beverage) for a week or so. If you don't stock up, there won't be anything, anywhere to buy, because all of the businesses will be closed a day or two before, and maybe up to ten days after the first day of the New Year. Closing down the business for more than two weeks to celebrate New Year is not common, but not unheard of.

A few days before New Year are the time for the borrowers to re-pay their debts to the lenders. They don't want to carry the debt over to next year in believing that no matter how small your debt is, carrying it over will make the whole next year a bad year. In paying your debt off, the next year will be your debt-free-year. Of course, if in case you don't have any money, and you can't pay, then you have to go hiding, because the lenders will make it very unpleasant for you these days when they catch you.

The last few days of the year, the city turns very jubilantly noisy. People go into the street to shop, to buy materials for decoration, materials to make the tradition of "bánh chưng, bánh tét", "mâm ngũ qủa" those special display of fruit plates, and "tet" rice cakes. No matter how poor you are, during "tet", you have to have at least a few of these in display, and in showing appreciation of the memories of the deaths, and to share with your relatives, neighbors, and friends. Depending how big you want to show off, these tasks would take days if not weeks to complete.

There are so many tradition in preparing for the New Year celebration, it would take a few hundred pages to describe these traditions and  customary practices. I'll leave it for the professional writers.

Our plan for this year vacation won't be during the New Year. We miss it by about two or three weeks due to the renovation of our restaurant. The architecture and contractors have been dragging their feet for too long. We can only make it two or three weeks after. We'll miss all of that this year.

Was it a good or a bad sign? Will our New Year bring us luck or misfortune? blessing or damnation?
Only time will tell but I don't believe it anyways. I am a Catholic.

We always make our stop in Viet Nam during our vacations, but we don't spend too much time at our home in Sai Gon. We use it as a base, a place we can come back to after a long distant trip to recharge.

We decide that this year we have to go to places we haven't gone in the past, like China, Australia or maybe the Philippines. If time is an issue, we may have to re-visit Thailand or Hong Kong or Taiwan in shorter trips.

There's also one place in Viet Nam we haven't visited, that's Sapa, the northern tip of Viet Nam. We missed it the last two times visiting Ha Noi, and Ha Long Bay.

Thirty day spending for a vacation is long but sometimes not long enough when you have so many things you want to do. Preparing for the trip will be started soon in the next couple of weeks.

CHÚC MỪNG NĂM MỚI - MAY MẮN PHÁT TÀI (Happy New Year)