Visiting Family

Once Tet is started, people spend the first couple of days visiting family and friends. We took a bus to 

Rạch Giá, which was where my mom grew up. And went to visit several different spots where she grew up and people she knew. Here is the kitchen of a house of a neighbor.

These are the water storage jugs, covered to keep mosquitoes out!

 This is the family of one of moms cousins, and the sides of the house is tin. There's a hammock in the bedroom, it's actually a pretty small room.

We went to a temple where my moms grandparents are interred.

Moms Grandparents

In front of the main temple steps

Being tourists! Although the temple is doing well, there's a big addition being built.

She loves the mopeds!

 After the trip to the temple we went back to mom's cousins house for dinner. The concrete floor is a recent addition, it used to be a pond where they'd keep their own fish.

Charcoal braziers

No tables needed around here!

Dinner involved grilled seafood. We had bought some fresh shrimp and fish.

The old red roof part is a bit of moms old house. It's been taken over by newer buildings. I find it bizarre how people just add on there.

Tết is here!

Getting a drink

Stairs

 Today everything is closed and people spend the day at home or visiting family or close friends. So the traffic is much lighter than usual. These are pics of the house, the moped is an electric one I'm borrowing from my uncle. It's pretty fun.

This is the way to the place we're staying. I keep thinking alleyway, since it'd fit one car width, but since no one has cars, it's not a big deal. This really shows how light the traffic is, since normally you get at least several moped in a pic.

Tết  Foods : a pickle plate with dried shrimp, thousand year eggs, pickled shallots. Ban Bao, Thit Kho, rice and noodles.

Li xi: good luck money for the kids.

Altars everywhere

Bus Altar - I think the horses are to help keep the bus moving.

Vietnamese are mostly Buddhists, and some are Catholics, and I'm sure there are all sorts of minority religions too, but the one thing they all have in common is that they put up little altars. There's usually an image of whichever deity they're praying to, incense, and some flowers or fruit offerings.

My Aunt prepping for Tet. 

Multiple altars

Funky Amusement Parks

Suối Tiên is a cool, funky Vietnamese take on an amusement park. It's got a lot of historical inspirations, and is part amusement, part educational, part spiritual. There are sections based on cultural or historical stories, and some temples to various notables. And then there are ferris wheels, roller coasters and various other rides. There's even a water park. It definitely shows a different culture!

Main entrance

Tickets - about $1 for kids, $1.60 for adults.

It seems cheap, and it is, but the amusements are separately purchased, so if you just want to go to the temples and walk the gardens, that's fine. If you want to ride the rides you buy tickets for each one. And really, the rides cost something like 25-50c, so it was really very reasonable.

Temple to King Hung

So pensive..

Loving the ice cream there!

View outside

Awfully large crocodile

She loves carousels!

I guess these are elephant tusks, but not sure what they mean.

Food prices: about $1 or 75c

Another temple

Lovely lotus flower

Tiên Dong beach


This is actually a separate little section with its own entrance fee. My parents didn't feel the need to go in, so we were only in for about an hour.

Do you see the funky swimsuit she has on? It was a rental. Yes, they rent swimsuits there, just in case you hadn't planned ahead. I rented one too. And didn't think about sanitary conditions. Nope, wasn't going there. So it was an interesting thing.

Scenes of daily life

Meat is sold either live of freshly butchered.  The markets have live chickens and ducks and sometimes other small animals like rabbits. Beef and pork are butchered I guess the day before and brought to market. So although it's all open air and would seem unsanitary, I don't see how the factory butcher system is much cleaner. People know who they just bought meat from, and don't seem to have problems saying what they think about any particular vendor. Word of mouth works here.

From backside of stall

Front of meat stall

Many varieties of rice

Traffic rules are mainly guidelines here. There's a lot of traffic. Everyone is on mopeds, and I find riding one makes you very connected to the city. There's no isolating bubble, you could even reach out and touch your fellow travelers. There are guys at various corners ready to offer you a ride to where ever you need to go to, but since we're obvious tourists we always take taxis. There aren't a lot of people with private cars, and even the max size of the moped is capped.

Traffic at a stop

A typical family vehicle