I definitely had an interesting New Year’s Eve, but I don’t use interesting as a bad thing. It turned out to be a lot more fun than I anticipated. Calah’s host family was going out bowling and they invited me to join. This New Year's is not the "real" new year here because culturally Viet Nam follows the lunar calendar, so the new year will begin in Febraury. But some people celebrate this one just for fun anywyas. My plan was to go to Calah’s work after I got off, be picked up there and head to dinner, then bowling until 12. I’m not a huge bowling fan and it seemed like that plan equaled about 4 hours of bowling, but I figured, it was plans, so why not go.
The plan changed slightly when I got to work in the morning and they had decided to close the office at noon. I wasn’t about to complain about getting off work early, but that left all afternoon open until I had to be downtown. Before I even had a chance to give much thought to how I would fill it, Co Bay invited me to have lunch at her house. And then Chi Oanh invited me to come to her house after that. I haven’t seen either of their houses yet and it was great to get a chance to hang out with co workers outside of work. From Chi Oanh’s I took a xe om (moto taxi) to the publishing house Calah works at. I got there early and Calah happened to be done early so we grapped a coffee to help us make it through the night.
Dinner turned out to be at this great place. Lau is a Vietnamese specialty where you boil things as you go in a pot on the table (if you saw pictures from when my family was here it is what we ate with my host family). But at this restaurant, everyone had an individual lau pot! A conveyor belt went around with small plates of things that you could add to your lau. It was so good and really fun!
From dinner we headed to the bowling alley. We played 3 games and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m really bad, but so was everyone else so it was fun. There were black lights and the same Abba song on repeat the entire night. A very stereotypical bowling experience.
After 3 games it was still only 10:30, but that seemed to be everyone’s bowling limit. We headed downtown, along with everyone else in Viet Nam. But it turned out the festival we were going to closed at 11. So after wandering for a bit, we jumped back into the car to get more food. We went for chao, another Vietnamese specialty—rice gruel.It is kind of like oatmeal, but not sweet and kind of just strange. But it was there, at the chao place that we brought in the new year. There was confetti and cheering and more rice gruel.
That was the last stop, by 1:30 we were back at Calah’s where I spent the night. It was by far the latest I’ve been up and out in so long--I was struggling by the end! But it was worth it.
And now it is 2010. I like New Year’s a lot in the sense that I really like significant markers of time. I like to have a moment to stop and thing about where I was last year—Gold-Themed Party that ended up at Gasworks Park to see the fireworks. A year ago I never would have imagined going to Viet Nam. And now it’s another new year. I won’t be pretend to have any clue about where I’ll be next year, but I really like to try to imagine it :)
PS Last night I watched a count of the best music videos of 2009. There were so many that I didn't know! Not that I watch a ton of music videos when at home, but normally I've at least seen clips of them or know the song. It was one of those moments where I feel like I've been gone for a really long time.
At the bowling alley
Ohhhh...black light :)
Why not have a million balloons on New Year's Eve Downtown?!
It's midnight! Let's eat rice gruel....
well, this is about exactly the next post i had in mind. includng title. and pictures...except that yours are better, so really i should just post a link to yours....hehe.
ReplyDeleteI must say, though, prob just cuz i dont usually go all out for new years (like planning themed parties) this new years eve was probably my most memorable ever.