Tet, which is the big Vietnamese/Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, is coming up in February. I think the actual first day of the new year, which is the year of the rat – appropriate given Jun’s dinner last night! – but it’s basically a ten-day-long celebration from roughly February 2nd through the 12th. My school shuts down and we don’t have classes from February 4th through the 11th.

I had been thinking about staying in HCMC since I’ve never been here for Tet before – but everyone says that a lot of the Vietnamese leave the city to go back to their hometowns in the countryside for the Tet holiday, and the city kind of shuts down. Restaurants are closed, etc.

So now we are thinking about going to Bali, Indonesia for that week. It will be Tim and a friend of his and another couple, Randy and Tuyet – and me, the omnipresent fifth wheel! They are going to stay at the very nice Bali Hyatt resort. I am thinking about staying at the much less nice – but half-price and hopefully at least decent – Sukun Bali Cottages , which are near the Bali Hyatt on Sanur Beach.

As with anything in Vietnam, this is all kind of tentative right now and you never know for sure until everything is booked, but I will be very excited if it comes together and couldn’t wait to post about it! I’ve always wanted to go to Indonesia, and this would be a very nice, relaxing trip. Then my dad gets into Vietnam three days after I’d return – on the 15th – so I would have a pretty laid back couple of weeks in a row! Not that everyday life over here is not always fairly laid back anyway!