If you follow my gripes you probably are very aware that one of the only things that I truly dislike about living in Vietnam is that this is an exceptionally noisy country. There seems to be almost a sort of agenda for people to be as loud as they possibly can. Between the constant beeping of horns, the never-ending construction, and the penchant for karaoke on absurdly loud soundsystems, it can be really tough to find so much as a moment's peace in this country.
But all of that stops for a brief period of time for the Lunar New Year, or as it is known here, Tet.
While I don't really know the history of why this is such a big deal in this country it seems to be like Christmas, Easter, and New Year all in one. Virtually everything shuts and people are somewhere doing something but for whatever reason, everyone kind of shuts the hell up for about a week.
You can find the noise of course, which was the case for us when we did our weekly bowling trip and found the mall just absolutely jam packed with apparently, every single child that lives in Da Nang.
The price to bowl was double on this day due to the holiday, which means that instead of $4 it was a whopping $8 for 3 games per person. This is one thing that I have always enjoyed about this country and seeing as how bowling alleys are extremely expensive to build and maintain, I don't know how this place turns a profit. But let's stay focused on the lack of noise instead.
Traffic dies down during this time of year as well because everyone heads to wherever their parents live and they just all hang out together. Therefore the constant horn-honking is kept at a minimum. Don't get me wrong, it's still a horn-honking hell-fest but it is drastically less than usual.
This year is even quieter than last year because there was a nationwide ban on private karaoke soundsystems, which basically everyone is happy about that. If it is anything like the other laws I have seen passed in this country it will be enforced for about 6 months and then everyone will go back to what they were doing before.
It is so much quieter than normal that I went downstairs with Nadi just to sit. We weren't doing anything else we were just sitting and reveling in how quiet it is. I really wish that the people would take notice of how nice this is an apply it to the rest of the year as well but I know that will never happen.
Very few restaurants are open and even fewer people are working to deliver it. This doesn't bode very well for someone like me that gets 90% of all the food he eats from delivery.
The above message was happening to just about anyone that was trying to order food from Grab, which is like UberEats or DoorDash or whatever the hell it is called in the west. There are no drivers right now and this makes very little sense to me. The people that are driving are paid three times what they normally would be paid yet still, nobody does it. If it was me I would jump at this chance to work then take two weeks off when everyone else goes back to work. Seriously, I don't understand people - when I was working traditional jobs I would ALWAYS volunteer for the double-time or time and half days to work.
Since we can't reliably get food delivered I walked around with Nadi to the few restaurants that are open. Here is another thing that gets me: The restaurants that didn't close for the holiday are jam packed all day every day. If I was a restaurant owner I would do anything I had to in order to stay open, even if it meant doing most of the work myself - yet most of them choose to close.
We went to another restaurant that I probably never would have considered going to just because it was open and Nadi got to meet the first rabbits that she has ever seen.
Nadi barked at them a bit but eventually her curiosity took over because these guys were not running away because they can't. They also didn't seem to be too fussed about this creature standing in front of them.
Another good aspect about this time of year is that it is still "winter" and the temps are really nice. But I recall from years past that this is near the end of it and soon it will be extremely hot from 9am to 9pm and that is why I normally don't go outside very often anymore and neither does Nadi. Seeing as how she probably doesn't have very many winters left in her life, we are out taking advantage of this as much as possible.
In just a few days all the people are going to return to their noise-making ways and I will be back to shouting at the sky like the old man I am slowly becoming.