Tracy's Travels: Celebrating Tet

Awake at the early hour of 6 in the morning and on a motobike to the station by a little past 7, we were the first ones on the small bus heading for Thai Nyugen--a small town two hours north of Hanoi. Soon in the country seeing water buffalo plowing the rice field, passing through small villages with open markets selling those last buys of fruit and flowers, wooden carts, hand tended crops of corn, and lots less traffic.

We arrived at the bus station 2 hours later. Unsure of what to do next (our destination was another 40 minutes away in the countryside at Mary's student Chien's country house), she called her and Chien said to stay at the station and she would be there soon. Ten minutes later, she arrived with a driver (whose "real" job is a teacher in a local high school) who quickly put our bags in the trunk and off we went toward the countryside near Dai Tu. The road was mostly wet, red mud--sometimes so mucky we took a slide.

We crossed three streams in this car and went through several smaller villages busy with last minute preparations before the first official day of Tet. Visions of green misted countryside, cornfields, fallow rice fields and distant mountains were always in sight. Chien signaled the driver to turn at her driveway and up the small incline to her house. We were greeted by her parents, brother and neighbors and ushered just inside the door to their sitting room and invited to sit down. There we began with small cups of green tea from the local area. The small cups were filled and refilled as is the custom in meeting friends.

Soon we were invited to sit on a platformed area (it looked like it could be a bed area in the evening) and the huge lunch was laid out. Women and men sat separately and each had their own small bowl to put food in and begin the feast. The meal we had was repeated three more times in the next days... it is the traditional meal of the New Year it seems. Banh Chong (a steamed packet of rice with pork, beans or egg in the middle), pork with stir fried vegetables, fresh cut vegetables, spring rolls, noodle soup, zow (a kind of prepared meat), and cooked young bamboo are some of the dishes.

After eating we were ushered back to the sitting area and more tea was served. Neighbors left and wished us a good new year and other neighbors arrived for some tea. Chien said that there are about 100 families in this area. Since she has lived here all of her life, she knows them all. We were invited to go to several different neighbor's homes. We took a walk down the dirt road in front of her home for a look at the rice fields and tea growing on the hillsides.

We all walked to one of the neighbors and were invited for more tea and kindness. Chien's father walked over after a while and told us it was time for our taxi to take us back to the station to get the last bus to Hanoi. Mary was invited and promised that she would be back in the spring for an overnight stay.

Since that day four days ago, we have been to three other dinners with the same kind of celebratory food for Tet. One was at her student Huy's house.

After dinner we went to Huy's mother's sister's house and had more tea and some sweets, while Mary tried to help her daughter hook up the new washer they had just bought and I was listening to American Idol on the TV while looking on through the opening to the washing room. After we left there, we were invited to the landlady's for ANOTHER dinner, though we were both quite full. As I looked at the table, there were us two Americans , two guys from India who work at a steel plant here as engineers and live in two of the 5 apartments, and the landlady's family... with her brother pouring us all Russian vodka!!

The fourth dinner (the next day) was with another student's family in Thai Nguyen--she lived IN town so we just had the two hour bus ride there. The food was similar to the other meals as was the tea drinking. The other "present" we got was a tour of the city--a museum, war memorial, and time with lots of lots of relatives and friends at Huyen's house and at her grandparent's house.

The kindness and openness of all these people was overwhelming and it was such a wonderful window into the life at Tet of the Vietnamese--one I never would have had without Mary!

Another tradition for Tet is to visit temples. We did that on the first day of Tet as we did not have any invitations on this day and so it was the perfect day. We walked to two temples in Hanoi. Here there are offerings made, prayers said, incense burned, and fake money burned (for good financial fortune). We did some of each!