After spending Christmas in Thailand, we spent the next holiday in our next country; Vietnam. After our motorbike tour through Ha Giang we traveled to Hanoi – the northern region’s major city – just a few days before the celebration.
Now Vietnam as a country primarily celebrates the Lunar New Year (called Tet in the country) which didn’t take place until January 22, 2023, so while we were expecting some celebration of the calendar new year in this major city we were not prepared for the scale.
First off, there were 3 separate major NYE events happening in the city. We chose the one closest to our hotel in the Old Quarter, so we could walk.
Before we even arrived, the growing mass of people walking was noticeable. City officials closed many of the roads to vehicles for the night – approaching this barrier, motor bikes were increasingly packed into parking “spots” (effectively any flat space) and the growing crowd weaved through.
Once we made it past the gate, we decided to turn town a side street – coincidentally, there is a weekend night market in the Old Quarter that did not stop just because of NYE. The night was still young, so we spent some time exploring the stalls:
The market was busy, but nothing more than you’d expect for a major one in a major city. After a walk all the way up and down this street, we attempted to approach the stage area where formal festivities were happening.
This was a bad decision.
Near the stage (located at the north point of the lake in the above map) was an area gated off within the larger gated area; this was the formal venue. We could only see this from a distance, however, because outside the fence was a completely solid wall of people standing and watching the event. Additionally, there were large crowds attempting to push past the standing crowd in both directions. The environment was nothing short of chaotic; we ultimately ended up slowly pushing our way through the crowd and taking the next street off the main road. Even that was jammed, but I (Clint) at least had space to take out my phone to photograph the crowd:
It was easier to walk through the rest of the Old Quarter, but still busy everywhere. We made a few detours into an art gallery and some shops along the road:
As midnight approached, we started to get some mild panic about not being able to find anywhere to be when the time came. We were straight up turned away from 2 bars nearby the event venue, declined to enter a hotel rooftop bar which offered us entry upon purchase of a 2 million VND (~$85 USD) food package. The strategy was to walk away from the main crowd until we found somewhere with space. The crowd did thin out after several blocks:
We stumbled across some traditional musicians playing:
And ultimately, we found a place to sit! This was a space on the 4th floor of a tattoo parlor – we don’t think its an actual restaurant/bar but was just opened up for the NYE crowd. By midnight they started running out of certain beers, but we had enough and the view was great!
We sat drinking, got some roasted corn, and people watched as the crowd flowed past below until midnight. At midnight, we actually had a great (if not very close up) view of the show! No fireworks here, just drones counting down:
We stayed in the Old Quarter for a little bit after New Years, but ultimately decided to go back by our place. When attempting to visit “beer street” we ran into the same problem as before, as the massive crowd by the stage earlier was now oozing towards the bar area:
We finally pushed our way out of the crowd, and decided to get some late night food. All the Banh Mi stands by our hotel were closed for the night, but luckily there was a restaurant close by that still had some food going. We ended the night with more beers, some fried noodles, and this view:
Happy (belated, we schedule these posts into the future) New Years everyone – here’s to 2023!
