Getting invited to a TET celebration

My landlord is a pretty awesome lady. Not only has she reduced my (and everyone else's) rent over the covid months, but she is very responsive as far as repairs are concerned and since she studied in Australia, her English is damn near perfect - which is a wonderful plus and certainly is not normal with condo owners at least among the people that I know.

So during TET, the celebration levels hit a maximum level in the country. It seems as though everywhere you go there is some sort of gathering going on that involves a ton of food and drinks as well as the obligatory karaoke at maximum volume - which is something I could do without.

144270926_914886549285515_1116738022285710955_n.jpg

Most of the people that were invited to our yard party were of course Vietnamese as you would expect. Despite the fact that my condo building is 75% foreigners it is understandable that the owners would know quite a few Vietnamese people seeing as how we are in Vietnam and the expat population constitutes less than half of one percent of the overall population.

Most of these people did not speak English and I do not speak Vietnamese, but that didn't stop everyone from having a great time. It seems like every time I turned around someone was cheers-ing saying one of the few Vietnamese phrases I know "Mot, hai, ban. YO!" which is just 1,2,3, DRINK as far as I can tell.

143568219_447908229954077_2774058001729525778_n.jpg

Because of this, we were absolutely tearing through the Tiger beers, which is something the owner had in vast quantities because, as she later told me, it would be one of the most embarrassing things that could possibly happen when you host a part to run out of drinks. The following day there was a full crate of beer outside my condo door because apparently, they bought about 200 more cans of beer than they needed for the night.

I didn't tell her that I never drink beer at home so I would imagine that this crate of beer will be something I will end up re-gifting in the future.

The best thing about all this food is that despite having lived in this country for a couple of years I am not terribly aware of what most Vietnamese food is, let alone what it tastes like. So this was a great way for me to sample some stuff that I probably wouldn't have tried otherwise.

144382590_321266209313238_4218867833335228645_n.jpg

My apologies for the crudity of this photo but i refuse to use flash and my phone doesn't have the best camera on it to begin with. I don't think the flash would have mattered anyway due to the massive amount of lighting that was going on there already. Maybe I have shaky arms. I don't know

Anyway, this was when the karaoke started up and also is right around the time I had to leave 20 minutes later. I don't know how it is that the locals can endure such absurdly and overly loud amplification, but they don't seem to mind. I wonder how many of them have been doing this their entire lives and therefore have rather serious hearing loss. Maybe they need it to be this loud.

The thing that I liked best about this celebration is the kindness that the owner of the building extended in our direction even though we are not really part of her "crew." The rest of the people that were there were friends and family and we were waited on and had our drinks refilled like we were VIP's or something. This level of kindness isn't something that I have grown accustomed to back in my home country of USA.

It was a lot of fun and even though I had to leave because of the entirely too loud karaoke, I made sure that the owner was aware of my thanks. It was nice to be treated this way even though all of the people in attendance barely even know me. Maybe I should try to change that....


src

H2
H3
H4
3 columns
2 columns
1 column
3 Comments
Ecency