Nguyen Hue flower street festival, an interesting cultural activity of Ho Chi Minh on Tet holiday

Decorating Nguyen Hue flower street on Tet holiday, which is also known as Lunar New Year in Vietnam, becomes an indispensable cultural activity of Ho Chi Minh city every year.

This is also a must-to-see spot for the locals as well as tourists when they are in the city before and during Tet holiday. This is a time when Vietnamese people wear colorful, beautiful traditional costumes such as Ao Dai, a traditional long dress of the Vietnamese, to visit Nguyen Hue flower street to have nice photos with their family and friends or just to enjoy beautiful flowers of the spring.

Workers often spend about one week in finishing Nguyen Hue flower street, which is in Nguyen Hue popular walking street, very close to the Opera House and the City Hall, in district 1.

Decoration of the flower street will take the sacred animal of that year as a main character. When you see one of the main gates of Nguyen Hue flower street, you can guess a year of which sacred animal. For example, 2020 is the year of Rat. So, you can see many cute symbols of Rat depicted in the flower street. This year is the year of buffalo, then the buffalo is the main object in the decoration with the subject: Ho Chi Minh city: Civilization – Modern – Sentiment.

Nguyen Hue flower street festival is often launched in the evening of the 28th of December of lunar calendar every year with some interesting music performance and it opens freely until at the end of the fourth day of Lunar New Year.

There are some ways to determine lunar calendar of Tet holiday. One way is to look at a small number under the calendar which shows a lunar day and a lunar month corresponding to the date of the calendar. The second is to google on the internet. Generally, lunar month often follows the current month of the calendar. For example, this time is in February, but it is just in lunar January for the lunar calendar. So, Tet holidays often falls at the end of January and in the beginning of February.

Ho Chi Minh citizen hang out to enjoy beautiful flowers in Nguyen Hue street

When Nguyen Hue flower street opens, local people and tourists can visit it the whole day and night. However, 2021 is a special year when COVID-19 pandemic becomes complex and unpredictable nearly one week before Tet holiday in Ho Chi Minh city. This leads to the limited number of visitors each time.

To prevent the COVID-19 infection and be safe for everyone, Nguyen Hue flower street 2021 had to cancel the opening ceremony some days before the scheduled time. It just opens for visitors from the 29th lunar December until the 5th lunar January, from 08:00 to 17:00 per day. All visitors must wear face masks when entering the entrance, even during taking a photo. Some other measures are also applied to prevent the spread of virus such as: handwashing by an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, temperature check, staying at least 2 meters away from other people at the entrance of the public places.

Messages of 5K to prevent the pandemic at the flower street

A message of 5K printed on a very cute buffalo photo to prevent the Covid infection can be seen everywhere at the flower street. These are: FACE MASK, HAND SANITIZER, NO GATHERING, KEEPING DISTANCE, HEALTH DECLARATION.

Here are some photos of Nguyen Hue flower street in Ho Chi Minh city 2021 from 10 February to 16 February 2021 (or from the 29th of the last lunar month to the 5th day of lunar new year).