Tet is tiring... But the party must go on.
Nguyen Hue Road has been turned into a traditional rural vietnamese village, complete with rice fields and millions of flowers. There are swarms of Saigonites all over the streets at all times of the day and night. Last night there was a giant sticky rice cake downtown that weighed 1.2 tons. It fed over 200,000 people. There are musical acts, guys who fold rice stalks into grasshoppers, art exhibitions, traditional dancing, fireworks...
Today i went to Anh's house for a Tet lunch. She lives in a tiny house (apartment) with her two sisters, her mother, father and grandmother. The living room doubles as An's bedroom, as well as garage for their scooters. Oh, and there's a piano in there too.
Anh's parents moved from Hanoi in 1975 as part of the governmental plan to reconstruct and "re-educate" the south after the war. So Anh's ma made northern vietnamese food. We had a sticky rice cake with pork in it, some kind of pork bologna loaf thing, chicken glass noodle soup, and this fruit called a milk apple, which is kind of like an apple, but the inside is gooey and tastes like sweet milk.
Anh has this habit of forcing me to eat stuff. Several times during a meal, she'll point at something and say, "Eat all that." And i'll balk, and she says, "You should eat all that." She won't take no for an answer. I don't know yet if it's just her, or if it's a vietnamese thing.
Tet officially ends tonight, but people don't actually go back to work for a few more days. I hope the businesses open soon, because soon i'm going to need to get to work.
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