Tet (Lunar New Year) is the biggest event of the Vietnamese calendar full of well wishing, symbolic gestures and traditional foods. The date changes every year according to the lunar calendar and this year it happened on 14th Feb. Preparations start at least a week before with much cooking and cleaning.
And thus was my prep for Tet (though on a much smaller scale). We tried to include as many traditions as we could.
Food wise we had candied lotus seeds, coconut & soursop, watermelon seeds, peanut, cashew & sesame brittle, nam chua (kinda like a vietnamese salami) and cha chien (kinda like fried pork loaf). I also cooked thit kho (caramelised pork), cha gio (viet spring rolls) and canh mang (bamboo shoot soup).
Adam and I set out in the morning to aquire flowers and a "pot of gold" which you can see in the photo above in the form of a vase filled with water. Dylan came around for lunch and brought some Saigon beer : )
Our Tet 2010 photo.
We're not meant to wear black on this day, only spring colours. Not surprisingly all my "spring coloured clothes" are warm weather clothes!! So I did my best with my springy-est dress but had to rug up with some thick stockings and cardigan to prevent hypothermia. Surely my efforts in keeping other traditions will make up for it.
All in all, I think we managed to celebrate in the spirit of Tet. Massive shout out to Ads, without whom, Tet would not have been possible this year.
Chuc mung nam moi.
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