This may come as a surprise to Westerners, but it’s still New Year’s Day in Vietnam, and much of the rest of Asia for that matter. While the Western New Year tends to involve massive celebration on New Year’s Eve, it’s business as usual on January 2nd at the latest in many places.
Not so in Vietnam, where Tet celebrations go on for at least a full week. Flights, buses and trains actually see an uptick as many Vietnamese begin returning to work from their celebrations at home right around now. Monday after the first week of Tet is, in fact, the first time cities like Saigon start looking a little more like their bustling selves after the disappearance of the entire city for Tet.
This hardly means, however, that Tet is over for everyone. One café owner in Saigon complained that some of his employees leave for Tet for weeks. Some of it is apparently planned and requested in advance; others just take the time off whether it’s granted or not.
“Tet is the most important holiday in Vietnam for Vietnamese people. This is the only time many of us see our families for the whole year,” Linh, a Vietnamese university student, explains.
This cultural point is something that many foreigners doing business in Vietnam find hard to understand, but is prevalent. John, an expatriate professional in Saigon explains that “a lot of Vietnamese people even put Tet ahead of their careers, and people doing business here have to be able to understand and cater to that.” John’s firm is one of the foreign companies that gives a full week of paid holiday off for its employees during Tet.
Other places that aren’t so flexible, however, find that their employees will risk losing their jobs to leave for a full Tet vacation whether their employer grants it or not. Even schools are affected by this post-Tet exodus. Paul, an English teacher at a foreign language school in Saigon says, “My students start trickling back right now, but I usually won’t have a full class for a few weeks after the official end of Tet.”
That’s at least one situation we can all empathize with. Many students here in the West take days off year-round.
I love Tet!
We love Tet, too!
Haha, wow, I don't blame them for taking the week off. The the funnest time of the year.
If only we can keep on celebrating here in the states.
Tet is my favorite time of the year! So much good food and fun times with family and friends. I'm still celebrating Tet now, and I'm in Cali! 😀