New Year

Had a good New Year's here in Ho Chi Minh City. I met up with Hien and a group of Americans that she knows through her english school. There was Chad, who I met the day before; Eric and Margo, a couple from Tennessee; and Ashley and Catherine, two girls from New York. The streets were ridiculously packed, and walking was hard enough, let alone driving. We had dinner at Kim's Cafe near Pham Ngu Lau, and then slowly walked through the city, settling on doing the countdown on the roof-top bar of the Rex Hotel. After midnight, we popped that bottle of Hungarian champagne, which was actually ok, and watched fireworks obscured by buildings. After that, some of us went to Apocalypse Now, this super cheesy posh club nearby. Topping off the night, it was just me and Chad, shootin' the shit and getting in some good old-fashioned drunk philosophising at a dive bar until 4:30.

New Years has slowly become my least favorite of the major holidays. Its too bad, since it's so close to Christmas, which usually rules. The pressure to have a crazy time makes it amatuer hour, where people seem to feel they have to put a year's worth of partying into one night. I was looking forward to being in HCMC for New Years, thinking that the change of location would make it better. Oddly enough, despite being in South East Asia, my New Years, as well as my Christmas, seemed to be somehow the same as back home. With Christmas, my mom and I were in Bangkok, and managed to have a traditional Polish dinner, which is how I do it every year. For some reason, even though I had a lot fun this year for New Years, some of the same baggage seemed to come along. Its hard to describe exactly, but I simply felt that some of those things that drove me nuts with New Years in the States managed to work its way here. Nothing too major, and I can't even describe anything specific, but just the general vibe was the same. Maybe because I was with a group of Americans, but it seems like New Years has become an entity in and of itself that can transcend borders. Looking forward to 2011 though, with its first two weeks being spent in Vietnam being a great start