Here's a blogpost about my Tet vacation.

Visited Vietnam during the lunar new year and spent around $750 on lucky money . At first I was grumpy that I was expected to spend so much on people I don't know, but it made everyone so happy to get it. I started giving out notes to random people who still had to work during the holiday and felt like some rich philanthropist helping the working class. Next time I'll bring a ton and larp as saint helping the poor.

I was also wearing one of these for the festival, it's called an ao dai. People were staring at me a lot and talking about me behind my back. I don't know much vietnamese but I know the word for 'handsome man' . My wife said I can't live in vietnam because my ego will get too big. She is correct.

Also spotted some marseys! Our taxi driver had a bunch of these on his dash.

The festival in downtown Saigon was very pretty

All the districts of Saigon built different displays for the festival. I'm not sure if there was a competition, but I'm sure there was some way of voting for the best display. Apparently last year was even more impressive since everyone's favorite year is the year of the dragon.

Some more photos from around town:

This was the first year that fireworks were legal, so everyone went out and bought some. We were on the 30th floor looking towards the landmark building in the city center for "the display" but when the time came, everyone in the city lit off their own fireworks and created the biggest fireworks display I've ever seen, completely unplanned. It was absolutely incredible. There were fireworks across the horizon in all directions. We tried to take a video but it came out crap, so I had to look one up online:

https://instagram.com/reel/DFZvKSXvQOi/

Anyways, Saigon has some very beautiful parts, but when you travel between them you'll see the poor areas, where people are living in mud huts and thatch roofs. There's also the sprawling slums of recycled and rusty corrugated steel roofs. It's still a very pleasant place to visit for tourists. It's also very cheap to live in the nice areas, and pretty much everyone below the age of 40 speaks okay english, and everyone below 30 speaks good english.

I had a great time. It was fun hanging out with the in-laws and if you're a foreigner (white) then you always get amazing service everywhere you go.