Lunar New Year, travels and friends

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Better late than never, so here is my long overdue update.

To start the year, the most worthwhile experience to describe is the Lunar New Year or as they call it here: Tet.  It happens in February and this year, given that is falls on a weekend, everyone got 9 days off.  This is a big challenge for businesses that work internationally like us, given that to have workers work during Tet costs a minimum of 300% multiplied by hours and days.  But that is the current reality and it gets built into price of doing business.

Tet is anticipated by everyone and reminds me of Spain and people waiting for the holly week.  They say that people work all year to save enough money to go home and buy gifts for everyone.  It is a tradition for people to return to their villages so Saigon becomes a very pleasant place with little traffic and noise.

Right before Tet, it is customary to get a peach blossom tree in the south with yellow blossoms and a cherry blossom tree in  the north.  Prices range from several dollars for a small one to hundreds of dollars for big ones.  It is considered lucky if the tree blooms exactly during the New Year and has many flowers.  And they seem to do so on queue: it looks very magical.

On the first day of New Year everyone awaits their lucky money envelopes: people purchase red gold envelopes and put money bills into them to later exchange with family and friends.  There are some important rules around this activity: bills should be brand new, never used, amount depends on relationship (kids and older parents get most) and middle age people get almost none, given that they can earn.  I was a bit disappointed when I went to my offices on the new years day and handed out hundreds of envelopes to my staff (yes, all 1200 staff get one!), yet the boss got none.  After expressing my bewilderment to my management team after I did a lucky draw of envelopes for them also, I ended up getting a few, I think because they felt bad.  So I don't think I will be starting any new trends on lucky money, simply will have to adjust my expectation for next year.  

One more thing: seemed that all the excitement was anticipating the new year and the lucky money: people receiving the money treated it like it was normal, I was really surprised at the discrepancy of the build - up to it and then very low key reactions.  So when it comes to really celebrating, I say Spain wins.

Just before the new year we had year end parties for our employees in both locations.  Those were big gala dinners and entertainment, something that in the western world got cut out of company budgets long ago.  My managers encouraged me to do a little Vietnamese singing, so after some practice, I did and it was a big hit.  Even though it was a few lines of very famous song, staff were screaming so loud I could not hear myself.

Also, I got to wear a traditional Vietnamese Ao Di  (won't even try to explain how to pronounce it), and when walking downtown with my lady friend, I was a total celebrity: both local people and foreigners thought it was awesome!

After a few days in the deserted city on new year, we decided to go to Malaysia for s short getaway.  It was an interesting trip: country is well developed, lots of construction, very good prices and amazing shopping.  We hit majority of the tourist things with the highlight being the Petronas towers, dressed up in burka and visited biggest mosque in KL, had some nice food and even tried a shisha for the first time (a light version of tobacco in a water filtered contraption).

We stayed in a good apartment close to the city that featured a rooftop infinity pool and bar that had a view out of this world.

Overall impression: nice clean country with good food, millions of tourists and a traction and great shopping.  However, the service and local knowledge of people was astoundingly poor.  Taxi drivers haggled the price every time despite the fact that it is illegal, they had no clue where city's mail Islamic art museum was and people working in services could not have been less helpful.  Maybe we just hit an unlucky string of events, but the feeling of the surroundings completely did not match the people living in KL.

We were supposed to take a side trip to Singapore,  but that did not work out as we underestimated the time it was going to take to get there, about 6 hours on a bus, so left it for next time.

In March, Sam came to visit on his way from Australia to Vancouver.  It was very nice to have him and to show him some of the local lifestyle.  I think he was quite happy to be pampered for a week, to meet my friends and enjoy some Vietnamese cuisine.  We went to the famous Cu Chi tunnels that were used during the Vietnam war by the resistance fighters.  We even crawled into some of the tunnels: I did one and could not imagine how people could live for years in them, considering the ones we went into were enlarged for tourists and we still had to crawl hunched down.  Not a good place for anyone afraid of confined spaces.  Sam did some extra crawling as he was a bit more adventurous, we tried some tapioca food they used in the war and got to shoot some AK 47 rounds at the range there.  Interesting place with very dark past.  Sam left to make room for Cathy and the girls coming next.