My First Video Post -- Fireworks in Saigon 2006

Here it is--the culmination of blood, sweat, and tears. Well, actually, just tears of frustration having to sign up for everything under the planet. I now know why more people do not video blog, or have "vlogs" as they are now called. You'd rather give away your first born child than jump through all the hoops to put a simple video on the internet.

That caveat aside, this marks the dawn of a new age, a moving picture age, in the life of The Bleeding Ear. Let me just say that if I started a new blog, or vlog, I should call it The Bleeding Eye because of the hours I have spent staring at these ubiquitously boring webpages. However, for your viewing pleasure, I have "wade[d] through the slaughter for the crown" (St. Thomas Aquinas).

Lunar New Year's Eve was a great night. It's like New Year's Eve in America, except it is the sign of four days or partying instead of one. It's a mixture of Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve--that's the only way I can describe it to a westerner.

Almost the whole city (Saigon, 8 million people) turned out downtown for partying. The city closed off a whole street, decorated it with flowers, dressed it up like an old Vietnamese village, and let people walk up and down taking pictures. It also closed another street by the Hotel Continental and set up a stage in front of the opera house. On stage, various pop stars sang traditional vietnamese new year music. Great fun.

Afterwards, the whole city drove to the Mekong river to watch the fireworks. You couldn't have gone home if you wanted to. A terrorist attack would have been easier and killed far more people than the 9/11 attacks, because we were packed in like sardines. A whole street (four lanes--which is a very large street in Saigon) packed impromptu to a standstill, people sitting with their significant others on motorbikes in the middle of the road, laughing, eating dried squid, and waiting for the fireworks to begin.

When it happened it was great. Americans see fireworks alot, so we like them, ooh and ah a little, but don't go crazy. Vietnam outlaws fireworks, so the enthusiasm for them was catching.

After the fireworks were over, I spent an hour trying to get off the street I was on. Yes, it was that packed.

And now, without further ado, here's the video (Quicktime required):



Click on the picture or download the video here.