During the Lunar New Year the entirety of Vietnam stops work and goes to celebrate with family all over the place. The closest thing I can relate this celebration to would be what I remember Christmas was like when I was younger and all the family including the extended family would make great efforts to all be in the same place for at least a little while.
In the expat community we don't really do this although we do try to do something in the way of getting together and having some sort of party. It isn't really the same. For the most part all of us just continue to get one with our lives how we normally would and that includes going to our weekly bowling meetups even though we had heard that the shopping mall that it is located in was going to be a madhouse and that the bowling itself was going to be twice the price that it normally is. Seeing as how the normal price for 3 games and shoe rental is $4 total, almost everyone agreed that they could probably afford to pay $8.
It's funny to me to think about it in that regard because although I haven't been bowling in the west in around 20 years, I would imagine you can't even bowl 1 game for $8.
When we arrived at the Lotte mart for our weekly bowling we had expected there to be a few more people than usual but we hadn't expected it to be the madhouse that it was.
The gaming area behind the lanes is considerably more popular than actual bowling is. I think this is because for little kids bowling seems like it would be fun but after they bowl their 9th gutter ball in a row and are completely incapable of hitting the pins, they kind of lose interest. The silly games back there where you just hit a button to make something go fishing for reward tickets is a little more the ability level of the average 3 year old I would imagine.
These lanes do not have the "bumpers" that other lanes I have had can pull up to eliminate the possibility of gutterballs and honestly, I am glad they don't have these things. I have nothing against children but they would clog up the lanes if more of them were playing and they also do not observe courtesy rules at all. One time a kid just decided he was going to roll a ball down my lane and it ended up kind of screwing up the entire competition because i was on my second ball and the machine isn't capable of reracking the exact pin formation that was there previously.
It was nice to see that the bowling alley staff were actually not allowing people to use the seats reserved for bowlers. The gentleman that you can see with his back to me is a staff member of the lanes and he was politely telling anyone that got near the lanes that it is off-limits to anyone that isn't bowling.
Also, something happened that I wasn't expecting but was quite pleased that was done. The staff, knowing that we were coming because we have done so every single Thursday for 2 years in a row, reserved half of the lanes for us and when that turned out to not be enough lanes, they asked the other customers if they could move down the line to another lane so that our group could bowl together. I could see that the people who had been moved didn't seem to mind so I was happy that everything worked out that way.
When we were going up the escalators and it was absolutely jam-packed with people, I had some reservations about whether or not DUMBO was going to happen at all this week.
That poor "Bowling security guard" must have told 200 people to step away in the 2 hours that we were there. His efforts were appreciated and we left all of the staff a tip at the end, which is not something we normally do.
In the end the turnout was a mere 16 people and at first I was kind of annoyed that we didn't have more people turn up. As it turns out this was a blessing in disguise because if we had more than that turn up, we would have experienced great trouble in actually getting them on a lane without overcrowding the lanes. We have a rule where no more than 3 people are to play on any lane and for most people, this is already too many. I don't like to bowl with more than 2 but there just aren't enough lanes for us to do this.
The closing ceremony was a great success with almost all awards changing hands and this is something that we like to see because it keeps things fresh. Next week when we return to the lanes it should be back to normal. It was exciting seeing so many people at the lanes and many of them actually stopped to watch us play because even though we are not fantastic, we are a lot better than the average person that is wandering around Lotte Mart. Plus, i think the fact that a bunch of mostly white people had a bunch of medals and championship belts on the table likely made them think we are significantly more serious about this than we really are.
It was fun, but honestly I am looking forward to returning to the lanes next Thursday when we will likely return to the almost zero other customers in the place like it normally is.
