Tet holiday in Westerners' eyes

(QNO) - More and more people from the West visit Hoi An. They come here to experience culture, enjoy food and take part in traditional games or festivals, especially in the Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet).

Hoi An ancient town at Tet

Foreigners, especially the Westerners love Hoi An because of its peacefulness, ancientness, spacious space and fresh air. Besides traditional and national holidays, Hoi An is also known as a place of international holidays. Therefore, a lot of foreigners choose Hoi An for their holidays instead of their home town. Visiting Hoi An, they can relax and enjoy their holidays perfectly with the local traditional foods and drinks here.

On the occasion of Tet, Hoi An traditional foods become more plentiful, including several kinds of traditional cakes, candies, and sugared fruit. The city is also decorated more beautifully with coloured lanterns in different forms such as dragon, unicorn, phoenix, tortoise, star… As a rule, folk games for children and visitors, such as Mandarin square capturing, coconut leaf folding, lottery, squash-crab-fish-tiger, Reversi, rope jumping... are organized in An Hoi Sculpture Garden and on Nguyen Phuc Chu street. Foreign tourists can take part in these games because they are extremely simple and easy to understand. Moreover, the competition of making sticky rice cake is one of the significant activities on this case because sticky rice cake is one of the traditional Vietnamese foods. These cakes will finally be delivered to the poor.

Visitors to Hoi An during the Tet holiday are really interested in the busy atmosphere here. They are so impressed by the decorative arts and their meanings that they often try to stay here during the Tet. The lantern festival, the release of flower garlands and coloured lanterns in the Hoai river in New Year's Eve are the things the foreigners like best in Hoi An. Another activity that makes foreign visitors interested is giving lucky money in red envelops to children, which is very different from the Western world. The strange customs in the Tet holiday, along with special characters in Hoi An are pulling more and more visitors to Hoi An.