My Tet

The day before Tet, the Lunar New Year, I was drinking coffee as usual and started talking with an Irish guy who was just in town for a few days. We spent the evening walking around town, elbowing through crowds, watching the acrobatics and fireworks shows, and of course at bia hoi. Talking with tourists can be fun for a couple of reasons, you meet fascinating people from all over the world, and you can sound like somebody who actually knows something about Vietnam based on having been here for longer than a week...

Welcoming the New Year of the Rat

And somebody in my house is awfully cagey with all this talk about a rat!