TET is a holiday that a lot of the world might not be familiar with. I know that I certainly wasn't very familiar with it until I moved here and honestly, even though I do live here now, I still don't really know what it is celebrating although I do know what it is.
Tết is the Vietnamese celebration for the new year and it indicates the end of winter and the arrival of spring. In a way it is very similar to New Year's Day or any country's celebration of the arrival of a new year, but in Vietnam it involves a great deal more travel and it is a very important family holiday. I believe that it is the MOST important family holiday and it is all but obligatory that people return to their roots, which often can be villages far from where they work, in order to see their relatives.
I think that anytime families get back together is a good thing but after a few years of living here I know that as far as day-to-day life is concerned, you better prepare yourself as an expat if you are going to make it though this quite long holiday without a massive headache occurring.
Now I am not going to stand here and say that all of what I am saying is the whole truth because I honestly don't understand the entirety of this holiday. I just know what I have experienced in my own life here and know that as someone who is living here you need to prepare for almost everything in the country to be completely shut down or if it isn't, it will be operating at a "bare bones" level of operation and the prices they charge there for the few places that are open are going to be 20-30% higher than they normally would be.
Restaurants, pubs, bars, and any other public entertainment venue that remains open will be very open about the fact that they are charging more in order to compensate for the staff that must be paid more during this time of year. I hope that the money actually goes to the staff but there is no way for me to know if that is true or not. From the few foreign owned businesses that I frequent I know that they do pay them extra there, but they also have no choice but to be closed for a few days while they allow their staff to go home and visit their family.
One thing that everyone needs to really take seriously is the fact that banking, and especially ATM machines, are going to be completely out of commission for a long period of time. Last year it was around 10 days that there was no cash to be had in any ATM machine and this country doesn't really have a great deal of those anyway. At least in comparison to other places like Singapore and Thailand where there seems to be an ATM machine on every corner.
If you do not take out enough cash to make it to the end of January and beyond, there is a better than average chance that you are going to have to go cashless for a while. For people who don't live off a credit card, this can be difficult or impossible.
The supply chain for almost everything that isn't locally sourced is going to be disrupted. Things like dairy and fresh meat will not exist in the supermarkets at all during these times. I have experienced it being completely dried up before TET even officially starts because everyone from a the entire chain of supply has near a week off work during this time of year. The farmers, the transporters, the managers, the warehouse staff, even the people working on the retail end are simply not working during this time and this means that if you are someone that didn't prepare, you are going to be subjected to whatever happens to be left and this is if you can even find a store that is open.
This doesn't mean that you are going to starve to death if you don't prepare: Something will always be open as smaller businesses that don't have large families will normally use this time of year in order to sell dramatically more than they normally would and at accepted inflated prices too.
Tết can be a wonderful time to live here if you prepared for it because it is the ONLY time of the year where the cities and most of the country are very peaceful and quiet. I know that I am looking forward to a week-long absence of construction noise, even if this means that I am going to have to eat mostly frozen dishes that I prepared beforehand. Bring it on!