Midnight at Thong Nhat Park, Year of the Horse
It is the last hour of the old year and the trees around Thong Nhat Park are lit against a sky gone the colour of wet slate. Families press in along the paths, children in new clothes, grandmothers holding kumquat branches wrapped in red paper, and somewhere behind you a motorbike engine cuts and its rider joins the walk. At midnight on February 6, 2027, the first day of Tet and the start of the Year of the Horse, fireworks open over the city — Hanoi lights them at Thong Nhat Park, at Van Quan Lake, and at Lac Long Quan Flower Garden. Stand still for it. The whole point of Tet in Hanoi is not the display itself but the crowd around it, everyone facing the same direction at the same moment.
Walk the flower and Tet markets before the year turns
The days before New Year's Eve are when Hanoi shops, cooks and buys, and the markets are the city's real celebration. Flower markets run nationwide at Tet, and Hanoi's fill with the things you'll see on every doorstep and altar through the holiday: peach blossom branches, potted kumquat trees heavy with fruit, and platters of fruit arranged for the family shrine. Go early in the morning when the branches are still being unloaded.
- Buy a small kumquat or a single peach branch — you are not just shopping, you are joining a custom that runs from the Kitchen God Festival on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month through to the third day of the first lunar month.
- Watch for calligraphers writing auspicious characters and couplets in the traditional script. From the fifth day to the last day of Tet, Hanoi holds a costumed parade and a calligraphy exhibition where you can buy the characters written out in front of you.
- Stock up before New Year's Day itself: many shops close on the first day of Tet, so the market you browse today may be shuttered tomorrow.
Join the street celebrations and games
Hanoi's Tet is a street festival as much as a family one. The three main days — New Year's Eve eve, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day — are the heart of it, but the wider festival period stretches from the Kitchen God Festival to the third day of the first lunar month, and in practice for weeks around it.
- Look for lion and dragon dances moving through streets and into shopfronts, and traditional folk song and opera performances staged around the city.
- Try the traditional games that appear in public spaces nationwide: bau cua (a dice game played with a mat and a bowl), co tuong (Chinese chess), nem con (a ball-throwing game), da ga (cockfighting), and human chess, where live people stand in as the pieces on an oversized board.
- On New Year's Eve, watch for women in ao dai and children dressed in their finest — this is the night Hanoi dresses up.
- Keep your temper and your language clean. Quarrelling or swearing during Tet is considered bad luck for the year, and the whole city is operating on that rule.
Eat your way through the Tet table
Tet food is heavy, slow-cooked and shared, and much of it is sold from stalls and market counters through the holiday. The centrepiece is banh chung (also called banh tet) — sticky rice packed with meat and bean filling, wrapped in dong leaves and boiled for hours. Alongside it you'll find:
- Thit kho — pork braised until dark and soft, usually with eggs.
- Nem and cha gio — fresh and fried spring rolls.
- Mut — preserved fruits set out in bowls for visitors, the thing you'll be handed at every door you enter.
- La Han trai — Arhat fruit tea, and nuoc mia, fresh sugarcane juice, pressed to order.
- Ruou can — rice wine drunk communally from a bamboo tube, passed around a table.
If you are invited into a home, expect food and incense offered at the family altar before anyone eats — ancestor and god worship with food and incense is central to the holiday, and the meal follows it.
Timing, and how to move through it
Tet 2027 lands on February 6, the Year of the Horse. The three main days are New Year's Eve eve, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day, with the full period running from the Kitchen God Festival on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month to the third day of the first lunar month. The fireworks at Thong Nhat Park, Van Quan Lake and Lac Long Quan Flower Garden are a midnight event — arrive well before and expect to walk the last stretch.
Two customs worth knowing before you go: on New Year's Eve, households practise picking green — bringing home a leafy branch for luck — and elders give children and younger relatives red envelopes of money. Shops close on New Year's Day itself, so plan your meals and purchases around that. Hanoi does not publish a single consolidated Tet programme, so treat the parade and calligraphy exhibition as running from the fifth to the last day of the holiday rather than pinning them to a fixed date, and let the markets and street celebrations set your rhythm instead.
Book your Hanoi stay for early February, land a few days before New Year's Eve so you have time in the flower markets, and let the city's own schedule — markets, fireworks, parades, long meals — carry you through the first days of the Year of the Horse.