Multinational Tet In Phu My Hung
Despite coming from different countries, all of them are very fond of the Tet atmosphere in Viet Nam. Some people have experienced 10 New Years in Phu My Hung new urban area and there are also people eager to welcome the Vietnamese Lunar New Year for the first time. Though quite familiar with the style of welcoming the New Year in this area, they insist that annually they always “eagerly welcome spring as ever”. Let us listen to their private experience
FAMILY OF MR. Ralph Ludwig AND MS. TUYET NHUNG – OWNER OF COm TAm Ba SOn, NAM KHANG NEIGHBORHOOD
So far we have together welcomed 4 New Years in Phu My Hung. My wife’s family are in Dong Thap, we therefore often take advantage of the New Year to take our children to visit their grandparents. This year, our second child is still very small, only a few months old, so we’re mainly going around visiting our friends in the city.
Since the business of Com Tam Ba Son, we are quite busy (I myself have to spend time doing management work at MAI & LUDWIG Real Estate). But it is not because of that we fail to prepare for Tet in accordance with Vietnamese custom. Square cake, fruits, flowers are enough for New Year Eve offerings and for displaying on three New Year days. Usually our restaurant has Tet holidays from 27th Lunar Calendar so that the staff can go back home and we can have time shopping for Tet.
I notice that the ways to welcome Tet in Viet Nam and in the West are quite different. In Vietnam, the time to prepare for Tet is rather early. About a month before Tet, people paint their houses, do the cleaning and even go shopping for Tet. On New Year’s Days, people go to the neighbor’s house to wish Happy New Year and vice versa. In the West, particularly in Germany, my homeland, you must be invited so as to come to their house. I had the first Vietnamese New Year in 2006, but since I got married in 2009, I have got a warm atmosphere to welcome Tet with my small family.
On New Year’s days, our family go to our friends’ houses to wish them Happy New Year, welcome our friends to our home, and eat out together. We have been cooking all year round for catering business, we therefore love to eat out, go out to enjoy Tet atmosphere. On New Year’s days, not only are the streets in the Phu My Hung deserted but the city center is too, so it is comfortable to walk along.
In Phu My Hung, it seems that every year there is a very big Spring Flowers Festival in the Crescent. This is an annual meeting point of my family there! My wife says that such Spring Flowers Fair is significant because it is an opportunity for us to teach our children about the countryside, rice, cottage etc. because frankly we do not have time to take our children back to the homeland regularly so that they know what the field, the plough, the hoe are!
On the occasion of the New Year, we wish everybody good health and happiness and wish the world peace forever. But if there is a personal wish for the family, we wish all our family members good health, we wish our business have more and more customers. In the New Year, let bygones be bygones all the bad things of the previous year. Again, we wish all residents of Phu My Hung happiness and prosperity!
FAMILY OF MR. Ikeda Kiyohito AND Ms. HAI YEN- RESIDENTS OF Parkview
We consider ourselves “old folks” with more than 10 years living in Phu My Hung urban area! For about 5 years, 
Phu My Hung becomes more bustling with many new and diverse restaurants, many foreign dining brands. On New Year’s days, the streets become deserted but we estimate that over half of the restaurants here are open continuously in the New Year.
So, we are assured of eating during Tet. We do not intend to store food for the whole week of Tet but we take priority for the first three days of the New Year. Then, the whole family are comfortable to go out to enjoy the spring air, eat outside and relax after a year of working. In Phu My Hung, there is everything. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Western restaurants… are all here!
Our daughter Yukira is 8 years old this year. Each New Year, I and my daughter always walk in Spring Flowers Festival at the Crescent, take a lot of photos, then spend all the evening to choose the most beautiful pictures to send to her grandparents in Japan. It has become a habit, every year we go to the flower market in Phu My Hung to buy two flower pots to display indoors.
According to our custom, on the first day of the New Year, we visit our grandparents and wish them Happy New Year. With a turbulent year like the previous year, we believe that good things will come. In addition to our wishes for good health and happiness to our family as well as to our relatives, we sincerely pray peace to all people in the world.
Ms. SANDRA SMIRNJAK SECAK – resident of StarHill
We were born and grew up in Croatia, but after marriage, my husband and I almost lived and worked abroad. We lived in New Zealand for over 10 years, in Hong Kong for more than 2 years and in August, 2015 due to my husband’s work, we were present in Phu My Hung, Vietnam.
So this is the first year we welcome the Lunar New Year in Vietnam. Having welcome the Lunar New Year in Hong Kong for two years, which is considered as “the biggest festival of the year”, I think I more or less have experience of Asian New Year. The city is colorful, all houses are full of flowers, every corner carries a special atmosphere full of inspiration.
This year I will definitely visit Spring Flowers Festival in Phu My Hung because I heard the young girls in my building whisper ‘Spring Road, Spring Garden … very nice, very impressive’, which made me visualize all those things! In fact, I love the flower festival because in my hometown, the city of Zagreb, every year there is always a very spectacular flower festival.
I always consider myself lucky to have the chance to go to many countries, learn different cultures, meet people of different nationalities and experience the sacred hour of the New Year Eve with local people. Especially this year, I will welcome the New Year Eve with residents of Phu My Hung urban area.
On the occasion of the New Year 2016, we would like to wish all the people in Phu My Hung good health and wish peace and joy come to everyone.
Mr. ANTONIO DAMIANO – Papa Roma Restaurant in My Khang neighborhood
The man who knows 5 languages and who has traveled around the world said he enjoyed a New Year full of joy 
with his one- year- old daughter and his wife’s Vietnamese family last year. “My wife’s family are Buddhists so they also bought all kinds of flowers, fruits, jams, cakes in accordance with the custom and had offerings to pray for peace to all members of the family in the year,” Antonio said.
Antonio likes most of Vietnamese dishes, except those processed from dog and snake meat. He enjoys eating banh tet, banh chung, beef noodle soup. But he has not yet had the opportunity to learn Vietnamese cuisine. “I will soon learn cooking, maybe by just observing the way they cook, I can cook,” he said confidently. He has not planned to be in Saigon or in Hanoi in the New Year. “In Hanoi, during Tet most shops are closed for the whole week, while in Phu My Hung, the New Year may be very happy because there is a Spring Flowers Festival,” he said.
Antonio said that Vietnam and some other Asian countries are lucky to have many days’ holiday in the New Year, while in Italy people have only one day off on January 1st every year. “Tet is an opportunity for families in Vietnam to spend time with their parents, relatives, children and grandchildren, to eat and to laugh together. You are really happy,” Antonio said.
No matter where to welcome Tet, in Hanoi or in HCMC, Antonio says he will certainly spend most of his time at home with his wife and family. “I love my family and always want to share time and fun with them, especially to spend time playing and taking care of my little daughter Mayra.”
Family of Mr. Jeon Hee-Joo and Ms. Shin Hye-Young
I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City about 10 years ago, but I have lived in Phu My Hung just for 2 years. Having lived in another place, when moving to the model urban area in Viet Nam, I saw the difference. I will not mention this because probably everyone knows already. Having had a small child, I love the fresh environment and green trees here.
In our country Korea, there is a seasonal flowers festival. But in Phu My Hung, I see a very spectacular spring flowers festival. During Tet, I, my wife and my children often stay at home and have meals together because not many shops are open. But from the 3rd day there are many options for customers who are lazy to cook and want to eat out to breathe the spring air like our family.
2016 is the Monkey Year, I hope it will be a dynamic year for Vietnam as well as a dynamic year for our Korea. Our wish for everyone in 2016 is very simple: “May you laugh all year! Why? You laugh means you have the joy as expressed in your proverb “one laugh is equal to 10 tonics!”
