TET and a night out

Every year the Western staff take the Vietnamese staff out for a meal just before Christmas. The Vietnamese staff reciprocate, taking us out for a meal just before TET, the lunar new year. Last night we joined the Vietnamese staff for a bar-b-que, cook your own food at a local restaurant. This type of meal and restaurant is very common in Ho Chi Minh. Guests sit around a table that has a sunken hotplate. Raw meat is served to the table and the quests happily cook on the hot plate, while chatting. Salad is bought to the table, and a larger variety can be taken from the salad bar. At our table last night the two knowledgeable Vietnamese staff cooked: Marbled Australian beef Pork strips Pig heart in strips…. Surprisingly nice! Beef strips Squid Herring type fish. Hmmmm not for me Mushroom and tofu kebabs Mother fingers ( vegetable) Meat and mother finger kebabs. It was lovely to enjoy a night with the Vietnamese staff. They enjoy dressing up, out of the uniform they wear at school. The ladies look so slim and petite and lovely. They enjoy having their photo taken with me….. tall Western woman. I’ve included 2 pics of Ms Tham who works in year 5. She tried so hard to part / cut/ divide the thin strips of meat with her chop sticks into bite size pieces. The facial expression was priceless. Eventually she picked up the meat parted it with her finger and then proceeded to eat it with the chop sticks again. Tradition has it that Vietnamese people should met with relatives approx10 days before the lunar new year and celebrate the ending of the old year. Then on the first day of the new year families get together and have a huge TET party with a great deal of fancy food. Sounds just like Christmas to me! TET is also a time of giving. We give the staff who help us either gifts or money, “lucky money”. We usually collect money which is divided amongst the staff at school and in my apartment block and placed in a lucky red envelope. Guards, office staff, receptionists cleaners, maintenance staff , security guys, bus drivers etc. The cleaners earn about 2.5 million Dong a month. $120 US $ so a bonus of 300,000 thousand is a welcome benefit. The owner of our school is Vietnamese and he like many employers in this country, pays the staff double wages for TET. I was talking to Tue my teaching assistant and he tells me that TET and the giving, travel back to family, special food etc is very expensive. Sounds like Christmas to me. He said it often takes ages to pay off the extra expense involved. Sounds like Christmas to me!
Chuc mung nam moi. Happy New Year.