Christmas in Vietnam

Christmas is not really a holiday in Vietnam, but it is an event nonetheless. Shops, public spaces, hotels, etc all put up the decorations, and at ILA Vietnam we have a Christmas tree and competitions for the students - design a Christmas card, decorate a cardboard Christmas tree. And Santa came to visit the weekend classes as well. The reindeer on the left are part of the public Christmas display down near Front Beach in Vung Tau. The manger on the right is on display at the Vung Tau Tourist Hotel in Tran Hung Dao street.

On the other hand Christmas Day is not a national holiday. For ILA Vietnam we get the day off but officially it's an unpaid day, as is Christmas Eve when we close at 5pm (and hence no classes that day in 2008 because it was a Wednesday).

I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in HCM City, but then had to come back in the afternoon because I was covering for another teacher on 26 December. I stayed with a Vietnamese friend Phil (Phuong) who lives in a great apartment in District 7, a new town area of HCM City.

Then had Christmas lunch with Singaporean friends Sharon and Irene, and Sharon's mother Jane. Sharon is producing Vietnam Idol and has been here since July 2008. But what with our crazy schedules this was the first time we got to meet up.

We met up at Villa de Romaine which is a restaurant and boutique hotel on the Saigon River in the Thao Dien area of District 2. It serves Italian food but there are also a whole host of other pavilions next door serving a range of cuisines - Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese. It was a very pleasant - though very un-Christmassy - place to be, even when we got one of the unseasonal but frequent Saigon rain showers part way through our dessert! (Unfortunately this is a terrible photo of me!)