A letter from Hanoi to no one in particular, somewhere else, on a late January day

The Lunar New Year (Tet Vietnam) approaches

Back in my hometown Dublin, people often complain about the pre-Christmas madness – a result of the annual hype, commercialism, wintry weather, frantic shopping and the obligatory drinking – but perhaps they should be thankful the city is home to a mere 1.2 million people.

In Hanoi alone, the capital of Vietnam and the second largest city in the country, the population before the Lunar New Year Festival, known simply as Tet, swells to well over 4 million.

As a result of a constant urban-rural shift no one is really sure of the exact statistic but at times it feels like every single one of them is driving down the same road.

Vietnam's Tet holiday is best described as Christmas, New Year and Easter all rolled into one. People must give thanks to family, ancestors, house spirits, cousins, colleagues, and last, but not least, their boss.

And now with an economy accelerating towards prosperity, for the first time in the country's recent history, people can afford to celebrate.

With seemingly the entire population out shopping, the traffic, normally obscenely congested, grinds to a halt all over the city.

Near Hanoi's West Lake, on the way to the Water Park, the streets are lined with Tet-decorative plants – kumquat trees, apricot blossom trees and cherry blossom trees – and colossal pots, large enough for a plump Ali Baba to take refuge in.

As folk stop along the road, to browse and haggle, sometimes while still driving, the traffic comes a cropper. The din of beeps, shouts and motors seems to affect no one.

Blocking a bus and a string of SUVs with NGO plates, a young boy ties a kumquat tree with thick-rubber strips on to a middle-aged woman's Honda Dream.

The bus, lurching inches behind him, seems to be growling and grinding its teeth, like a Miyasaki-cartoon creation. The boy, blithely unawares, skilfully completes his task in a minute.

Afterwards, with the squat tree wobbling in the wind, the woman throttles off into the traffic while her daughter, shoved on the pillion, wraps her arms around the rump of the kumquat-pot.

At night the trees and pots remain, and in the misty rain and chilly air, the sellers sleep on two plastic-chairs pulled together, or play cards with a co-worker under the nearest street light, while trucks steam roll down the open road.

The Year of the Rooster is about to end and after a year long battle with avian flu, chickens are back on the menu. The public at large seems to think the potential pandemic has been packed off, with a nice dollop of irony, to a distant land called Turkey.

During the day, on patches of green, groups of men on their hunkers gamble on fighting cocks. A passing Australian tourist doesn't miss the opportunity for an innuendo.

Near the old quarter, home to one of the highest population densities in the world, where houses sit behind houses and living rooms are on the pavement, children play football with plastic sandals ignoring the scores of motorbikes driving past.

Restaurants heave with punters winding up to the festival. From inside a goat restaurant – considered to be sort of a local form of virility therapy – the guttural cries of "1, 2, 3, drink!" can be heard at one in the afternoon.

Inside men are swigging shots of goats' blood and goat balls liquor with huge grins spread across their reddening-faces.

As they leave, they light cigarettes, check text messages, and disappear into the swarming traffic. Not one of them wears a helmet.

According to one locally based injury prevention centre, at this time of year in Hanoi there may be up to ten times the normal rate of deaths on the road.

In newspapers Western developers try to show cultural sensitivity by saying there is no better time than the Year of the Dog for investment and growth.

Meanwhile, foreign directors of companies resign themselves to dwindling productivity as staff rush off to pagodas and fortune tellers.

All year long people have been borrowing good luck from the spirits and gods. Now they must remember to say thanks.

Red flowers, incense, fruit and fake-paper dollars sit in piles by street corners near pagodas. Offerings are also made to the ancestors in family altars where cigarettes, whisky and oranges - any kind - seem to dominate proceedings.

Gift baskets have become popular in recent years in Hanoi. Consisting of Lipton tea, Nescafe, cigarettes, Milo, ABC crackers, Pringles and cheap Bordeaux; there is not a single authentic Vietnamese product in most baskets. Popular families will end up with 20, while thrifty families play pass the parcel with them.

Everywhere people window shop for decorations and food – dried fruit, candied fruit, traditional bean cakes, and sticky rice - while driving their motorbikes.

A husband and wife point at shops, bickering over prices to each other, with all four eyes looking away from the road they drive straight ahead.

Those running out of petrol are never far away from someone with a 2-litre bottle of fuel. But the price is hiked from VND22,000 ($1.5) to about VND30,000 or more. Why?

“It's Tet already,” a street side seller says with a cute smile a week before Tet. Everyone needs to make a little extra.

A 13th month salary, or Tet bonus, is common for Vietnamese staff. Though, it is said that employees, to maintain favours for the following year, buy lavish gifts for bosses, or even just pass them an envelope, as a goodwill gesture. What comes around goes around.

Soon the mass exodus begins. New Year falls on January 29th this year. Anyone from outside Hanoi makes their way home. Planes, trains and buses in every direction to the countryside are all booked up.

Many pay for the cheap seats and stretch out on the floor at night. Cabins are packed with a multitude of gifts, trees, liquor and the sounds of happy chatter.

Some will sleep, while others smoke, sitting over hot tea, their legs jigging with excitement. For Vietnamese people, there is no place like home.

At the airport Viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese) return for the holiday. Such the pressure to show they have prospered abroad it is said the less financially successful ones rent out expensive watches and gold ear rings for the trip.

The city will empty out in a matter of days and the mood of the country will be transformed. An American writer, Dana Sachs, said for the best part of the year the Vietnamese follow the Western calendar, but for one week they follow the moon. Everyone is blissfully distracted.

After the intense build up every single one of them deserves a break. Throughout the year many Vietnamese have no leisurely Sundays, bank holiday weekends or summer breaks to the seaside.

So as the country finally puts its feet up and dreams of the year ahead, with all the trimmings, the streets of Hanoi are as close to deserted as they'll ever be.

Who would expect the Year of the Dog to begin with the all too unfamiliar sound of silence?

From the archives, if you miss or remember the kumquats

A crash course in tightening your finances
If you’re suffering from empty-wallet syndrome because you blew all your cash over Christmas and New Year and need to tighten up the finances before the Tet (Lunar New Year) holidays take note of these classic thrifty tips for tightening up your personal finances
1 Water: Don’t be fooled by companies or restaurants that expect you to actually pay for a substance that fills most of the earth. Hark back to the day when you first heard that people in France paid for something called “Perrier” and scoffed over your glass of tap water. Since then events have spiralled. Now mineral water is the norm – at home, in work and in most eateries. But why not just boil up tap water or bring other people’s empty bottles to work and fill them from the cooler? Or, when you’re in a restaurant just ask for a “glass of iced water” or “mot coc nuoc loc”. None of that bottled stuff which costs a dollar. The average recommended daily intake or water is 3 litres, while the average cost of water is VND5,000 per litre so your annual savings by not buying any could be, on average, VND5.79 million ($365).
2 Food: Even if you don’t particularly like socialising, parties, soirees, opening nights and dos are happening all the time and are a great way to eat and drink for free. That’s right. It’s a no-hands-in-your-pocket bonanza. You don’t even need to think of elaborate ways to avoid the bill. The main tactics are a) getting invited b) if not invited, finding someone who is c) if you don’t know anyone, just turn up anyway d) coming early and getting stuck in e) fasting for a day prior to the event to maximise eating capabilities. Annual savings: incalculable.
3 Transport: This is a tricky one. You have the option of just not buying a motorbike, but how do you get to work? How about moving house to your colleague’s neighbourhood and get them to drive you. Or move next door to your office, or better still, work from home! Taking a xe om can be pretty cheap on a one off basis, but using this service on a daily basis you’d be accruing losses of VND3-5 million per annum. Now, a true grandmaster of thriftiness would find out which of their friends is going home for three months and just borrow their motorbike. A classic skinflint move and not as hard as you think to pull off. Expat communities are a constant “who’s in-who’s out” situation. One Australian, who shall remain nameless, but his name rhymes with Ball Mavis, lived in Hanoi for three years using other’s people’s bikes the whole time. Hat’s off Mr. Mavis – you were titan of tightness!
Bonus Tip - Celebrity technique: In general, in bill paying situations there are innumerable ways to avoid forking out cash. Some people are fond of the “leave first and drop VND20,000 on the table” tactic, even though you had six beers, three plates of squid and bought a pack of cigarettes. But, we’d like to introduce you to the Rod Stewart manoeuvre, patented by the tightwad Scot millionaire rocker himself. First, make sure the group you’re drinking with are aware you’re in a buying rounds situation. Even prompt people – “what are you having?” Get the ball rolling with the waiter, “So that’s three gin tonics and…” Then you simply slip away to the toilet! By the time you come back, freshened up and relieved, the drinks are on the table and the bill has been paid. Repeat until drunk then leave, preferably on someone else’s motorbike to someone else’s house.

TAY-SPOTTING

A popular sport amongst Vietnamese children seems to be spotting a foreigner and although admittedly it doesn’t take much to see Teddy de Burca Jnr. coming, he’ll happily play along

Outside the traffic swirls past. Bao ve (Parking attendants) sit on customers’ bikes smoking cigarettes and picking their noses. Inside the crowded restaurant, amongst the clatter of plates and happy chatter of customers, I push away my just finished-bowl of banh cuon and lean back, blithely unawares to the world at large. It’s one of those moments where you’re happy to be thinking about nothing whatsoever and feel you have at long last blended into the Hanoi tapestry.

Then I hear a young mother, sitting opposite, say to her child, who is reluctant to chow down his fish sauce-soaked pancake, “ai day? (who’s that?)”.

I glance over my shoulder, expecting to see the child’s aunt or uncle, but there’s just a 2002 World Cup Pepsi poster pinned to a grimy, greasy wall. I realise that the “ai” in this situation is none other than myself. Suddenly, it seems the restaurant is collectively staring at me, in a nice way, and I can’t help feeling a little oversized for the wee plastic chair I’m perched on. I imagine this is how Gulliver would feel in a café in Lilliput.

With his mouth agog, the kid stares at me like I’m the man from the moon, as though disbelieving I could be that pasty skinned or have such an enormous hooked-nose. I smile as nicely as I can, in a sort of “look – I don’t bite” kind of way, while wondering, “how on earth would this child know my name?”

Then panic strikes – perhaps I know the mother. Is she an old colleague or the employee of an old café I used to frequent, per chance?

Quite often I’m spotted around town by such people. Just the other day a motorbike sidled up to me in the madness that is Dai Co Viet street, on the outskirts of town, and just as I prepared to swivel in my seat and growl – “what the hell are you looking at?” I heard him say “Teddy Chicken Curry Coca Cola”.

I realised it was the delivery boy from a sandwich shop, and no, he hadn’t anticipated I needed a sandwich, he was just thrilled to see me and remember my regular order. I guess I’m hard to miss.

Former colleagues and students always appear out of nowhere and greet me in the same way, “Do you remember me?” Why of course, I say, dismissing the notion of forgetting them with a laugh. As if. So naturally they follow up with, “What’s my name?”
“Something beginning with ‘t’ or ‘h’, right?” I say edging away. “Definitely one syllable, anyway.”

But no, this woman is no colleague, or former student. Why I wouldn’t know her from Eve. So why is she asking the child who I am? Then the penny drops, for the child that is. His eyes twinkle and he gurgles with pleasure before exclaiming, “Tay (westerner)!” much to the mother’s delight, who rewards the kid by shoving food in his mouth.

Of course, there is no denying it: I am a Tay. But that’s no reason why I should try and be funny or sarcastic, but foolishly, just as everyone goes back to eating and chatting, I blurt “dong”, as in ‘east’, while pointing at the kid, but the mother just stares blankly, and the restaurant goes completely silent again, like in the Wild West Saloons when the stranger walks in and orders Soda Pop. I guess it’s probably because I’m pronouncing it completely wrong, and out of paranoia I’m worried “dong” might be a swear word with the wrong tone, so I simplify, to try and dig myself out the hole and point at the kid again, “Vietnam”.

The mother claps, the child laughs, the woman behind the counter chimes in, and shouts out to everyone, “Vietnam! Tay noi ‘Vietnam!’” And everyone in the vicinity seems very impressed that the foreigner not only spoke but knows exactly what country he’s in.

I admit I’m not quite ready for Ai la trieu phu? (The local Who wants to be a millionaire?), but as I leave I am patted on the back, greeted by beatific smiles, three fine looking young women bat their eyelids, two men shake my hand and the bao ve invites me one cigarette. Getting on my motorbike feeling like a minor celebrity, I decide it’s not so bad sticking out like a sore thumb after all. Certainly beats being completely ignored, doesn’t it?