Celebrating Bunpimay Tet in Nghe An

As the weather in Vinh City began to change and exam days drew near, Lao students celebrated their traditional New Year. The Bunpimay festival in Nghe An province lacked the warmth of family gatherings and traditional rituals, but that didn't make it any less joyful or heartwarming.

Bunpimay, the New Year of the Lao, Thai, Cambodian, and Khmer people (in Vietnam), traditionally begins on the sixth day of the fifth month and ends on the fifth day of the sixth month. The main festival, Wun Salong, is celebrated during the full moon, when the sky is clear and the rivers are full of water, symbolizing a prosperous new year.

Splashing water on each other is believed to bring good luck.

Lao New Year is celebrated over three main days, from April 13th to 16th each year. During these days, Lao people take a break, do not work, and there are no commercial activities. On April 14th (similar to the first day of the Vietnamese New Year), families usually go to temples in the morning to light incense and pray. In the afternoon, they often invite monks to offer blessings, tie threads around wrists, and then splash water on everyone for good luck.

For international students, Tet (Lunar New Year) is a particularly meaningful time for everyone to think of their families and homeland, and to wish each other a new year filled with good fortune and happiness. On the afternoon of April 13th, the first day of Tet, we visited the Vinh University dormitory, where more than 300 Lao students live and study. From afar, we could hear the New Year atmosphere filling the five-story building with the sounds of guitars, singing, and joyful greetings.

The New Year was more clearly evident with rows of banners bearing the words "Happy New Year - Sa bai dee pi mang" hung by the dormitory management all along the entrance. As soon as we climbed the dormitory stairs, water was splashed all over us. Although we were aware of the Lao custom of splashing water, the visitors were still surprised.

After a brief moment of hesitation, everyone quickly broke into smiles at the sight of a Laotian girl named Kai (a second-year economics student): "We don't have much for Tet, we just prepare water and sweets to welcome everyone." Indeed, everywhere we went, we encountered water and more water, accompanied by good wishes for the new year... Celebrating her first Tet away from home, without enough ingredients to prepare traditional dishes like chicken and shrimp, cheo, and laap... but 18-year-old student Peng, who had only been in Vietnam for 5 months and was in the language learning phase, and her roommates were busy preparing a large pot of hotpot to invite the "Vietnamese volunteer teachers from the Hoa Cham Pa Club" to celebrate Tet.

And of course, before sitting down to the feast, there's a ritual of tying threads around the wrists and splashing water on the teachers; the more water splashed, the more luck one will have. Leading us on a tour of the dormitory to offer New Year greetings, Somsalith Mailorkhem, from Xieng Khouang province, a student of the 48th cohort of the Finance-Banking Faculty, and the deputy head of the Lao student affairs committee, said: "This year, many students didn't go home but stayed at school to celebrate the New Year, making cakes together, preparing feasts, and performing cultural shows... to prepare for the traditional New Year of our country. Every year, the school's administration, the Student Union, and the Vinh University Student Union organize activities to celebrate the traditional New Year for international students."

On the evening of April 14th, a traditional Tet (Lunar New Year) celebration for Lao students was held in Hall A of Vinh University. Activities such as meeting, exchanging New Year greetings, and sharing cultural experiences took place amidst lively music, traditional Lam Vong dances, and hand-threading with wishes for good fortune, making the Tet holiday away from home for Lao students in Nghe An even more heartwarming...

Khanh Ly - My Ha