The Jaded Empress Chronicles

                   N o sooner have we finished celebrating (Gregorian) New Year, then we swiftly move on to the next (Lunar) New Year in a mere matter of weeks.  Or Tet  (Tết Nguyen Dan) as it's officially known here in Vietnam. So that means another round of year-end parties and celebrations (good or bad, whichever way you look at it), but this time ramped-up on steroids - of the two New Year’s Eve’s, the biggest party is reserved for Tet. But Tet is so much more than merely heralding the start of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year and first lunar month. For those not familiar, or just plain confused, what exactly is Tet? More like, what isn’t Tet? For the Vietnamese, Tet (literally translating as "festival") is the biggest, most important celebration in the Vietnamese calendar and an extremely auspicious time to boot. Tet is a sort of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve all-in-one combo. In Vietnam, it's a tradition...

           Christmas in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) F or this Empress, Christmas in the tropical south never quite held the same refinement and downright quirkiness experienced in Hanoi, as detailed in my previous chronicle,  here   , which, of course you've already read?  Here in  Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon, the Christmas spirit has tended to err more on the Gin and Vodka varieties: some obscenely indulgent festive lunches washed-down with a tad too many cocktails in the city’s finest five-star hotel restaurants, or blurry festive nights in notorious nightspots like "Apocalypse Now" and "Lost in Saigon." As this Empress hasn’t set her well-pedicured foot in Hanoi since 2006, she is unable to make any comparisons, but Saigon does appear to have increasingly embraced Christmas and the festive season in a big way (albeit still no official public holiday celebrated here). Especially, the commercial way: that fi...

Christmas in Hanoi Except for the eight percent or so of the Christian population, up until really a couple of decades, Christmas was hardly celebrated as a 'religious festival' in Vietnam. For this predominately Mahayana Buddhism nation, Christmas was seen as a rather strange, totally foreign (literally), tradition. However, as Vietnam opened up to global influences, the urban Vietnamese have increasingly each year embraced Christmas and the festive spirit as a mainstream celebration (arguably a superficial, sparkly one at that and still a normal working day, not a public holiday) .  Now on the run-up to the big day – which stretches back to mid-November – you can’t move for flashing fairy lights, Christmas décor tat, multi-sized Santa suits and Christmas carols muzak piped through the malls. Just a taster of Christmas Present in Ho Chi Minh City. But like any good Christmas tale and in true Hollywood style, I return to the ghost of Christmas past…namely, Hanoi, a...