Today is New Year’s Eve -Tet in Vietnam – which is more of a family holiday here – no grand fireworks as far as we know. We spent a couple hours to decide where our next journeys would take us and made reservations.
What’s next? Dirk agreed to another new activity – learning how to make silk lanterns. The Pho Hoi Lantern Workshop is a family business and was recommended by a woman we met in Hui. They are very good at what they do, and very precise, and wanted us to learn how to make a quality item.
We first learned how to make the frame for the lantern. After that we switched to a larger frame to learn how to apply stretched silk to the frame. I made a large and a small patterned silk lantern while Dirk decided to make a plain one and then paint his own decorations with memories of some of our adventures! It took a while and is a little tricky but we are impressed with the results.
Thinking we’d grab a taxi when we got tired we started walking back but after about 4-5 block came upon a giant produce market. So many vegetables, and people and motorbikes! There were many items I couldn’t recognize nor ask about them because of the language. The produce market ended up on a long wharf area filled with tourists and boats ready for them where we stopped for a late lunch.
In the evening we wandered out to the “happening” spots but saw no new New Years activities other than many more people on the street. We ate something different (!) at our favorite little restaurant, enjoyed talking to another “regular” and thus ends Vietnamese New Year (Tet) for us.
2023 Travels of Pat and Dirk in Vietnam and other S.E. Asia countries 
Is that the pancake filled with shrimp?
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