Mid-Autumn Festival

On Sunday it is the Mid-Autumn festival, the second most important festival in Vietnam (after Tết). It's mostly celebrated by children and there is a tradition of carry lanterns. The biggest celebration in the whole country is in the city of Phan Thiết and took place this evening.

Once I found out about the lantern festival, I planned my trip around it. Unfortunately there's only one train per day going from Saigon and it leaves at 6.40am, so my alarm was set for 5.30am. I left my hotel and got a taxi to the train station. The train was pretty comfortable and it was a relaxing four hour journey. I got another taxi at the other end and checked in to my hotel where I met Rachael, my Australian friend who I met through Couchsurfing.

At around 5pm we headed out to follow the procession of children carrying lanterns through the city. Each school had a different lantern design, including various animals and fruit. We arrived to the main street where the main event was taking place. Each school had a massive float, some of which were incredible (see the extra photos). We were approached by a camera crew and interviewed for a TV channel. I doubt it made it on the air as it was a terrible interview! We met up with two girls from Saigon who had messaged me through Couchsurfing.

After it got dark, there was some dancing and then the main event started. The floats came by, one by one, followed by the kids from that school. There was a table of judges just in front of us and the floats usually kicked in to action as they reached the judges. Some had pyrotechnics, some had mechanical movements.

The whole thing lasted a couple of hours and then we had some Mooncakes, the traditional baked pastries eaten around the mid-autumn festival. There are pop-up stands all over Vietnam during this time of year selling dozens of different flavours, although they all include at least one salted egg yolk. We went for a sweet coconut and durian version.

We were driven by the two girls to meet some of their friends at a restaurant serving lẩu hot pots with fish and we shared three hot pots between eight of us. It was an interesting meal; tasty but not the easiest to eat, especially the fish. The group were all very nice.