Happy New Year…Happy New Year… (and repeat, ad nauseum)
Remember the year we spent Christmas in New York? I was blown away then by the visual spectacular of Christmas Yank-style. But there, it was mostly over-the-top ginormous trees. If you want lights, you need to visit Ho Chi Minh City.
Ands when I say lights, I mean thousands and thousands of lights, lining all the main streets of District 1.
From what I could work out, these lights go up in time for Christmas (a relatively minor celebration in Vietnam), but then stay up until after their truly huge event – Tet (Lunar New Year), which this year falls on February 2.
So the decorations incorporate a bit of Christmas, a bit of New Year…decorations for all occasions. And it means that there is no Twelfth Night statute of limitations on Christmas decorations. When we left Vietnam on the 16th of January, there was still plenty of Santas, snowmen and holly about. Weird, really, to have ‘snow scenes’ in a tropical (at least in parts) country…but I guess Australia is just as guilty of that.
And then when it comes to music…oh dear.
The Vietnamese are obsessed with the Abba song, ‘Happy New Year’. I know – it’s not one I’d heard of before either. But in every shop and every restaurant over our entire stay we heard it.
It’s not bad the first few times…but try hearing it several times a day, every day.
We went to one (fairly flash) restaurant in Ho Chi Minh that had this song, plus two versions of ‘Happy birthday’ on an iPod playlist on constant repeat. After we had heard the rotation for the fourth time, The Poolboy called a waiter over to the table and asked if he could please change the music.
“You don’t like happy music?” the waiter asked incredulously.
“No. No more happy music,” The Poolboy was emphatic.
Seriously, too much happy music is enough to make even the biggest Pollyanna a bit cranky.
Tomorrow, we’ll visit the markets.
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