HCMC gets grand welcome ready for Tet
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Nguyen Hue Street in downtown Ho Chi Minh City will be transformed into a street of flowers for Vietnam’s grandest festival, Tet (Lunar New Year), which falls on early February this year.
This year’s flower festival, from January 31 to February 6, is the annual event to be hosted by the HCMC People’s Committee and financed by local businesses.
It will feature flowers and bonsai brought from around Vietnam, including fresh flowers from Da Lat and areas in the southwest that will decorate the 800-meter road.
The street will begin with a garden of mai trees and apricot trees with yellow blossoms on them, the symbol of Tet in the south.
The display will be divided into various sections, but all depicting Vietnam’s countryside – there will be stacks of yellow straw, green bamboo trees, rice fields, and bamboo bridges over small canals.
The display will end at Bach Dang port with an apricot tree with large yellow blossoms and an artificial lake.
Elsewhere in the city, its 24 districts will each organize a banh tet (traditional sticky rice cake) making competition from January 26 to 31, and distribute 10,000 of the cakes to children at charity houses and shelters.
A 15-minute fireworks display beginning midnight on New Year’s Eve, February 2, will usher in the Lunar New Year.
The fireworks will be set off at eight different places.
The celebration will continue into the new year with traditional music performances and folk games on February 6.
As always during the New Year, vehicles will have limited access to Nguyen Hue Street and its vicinity.
