Same Same But Different

After going to Mui Ne for Christmas I decided to stay in Saigon for New Years. Nobody was up for paying loads of money for drinks in some overpriced club downtown so we decided instead to go to a local park in Saigon where they had constructed a huge stage. Never have I heard so much bad music played in a such a short proximity of time - but this is not to say that I didn’t relish every moment of this Vietnamese take on Western New Year (Vietnam has it’s own new year in February) - in fact I would go so far as to say it was one of my best new years ever (if a little cheesy). At midnight they let the crowd invade the stage and dance around to Abba’s “Happy New Year” (a song I was not familiar with until I arrive in Asia). After the stage invaders became to enthusiastic security stepped-in and festivities on stage became very subdued.