Vietnam to enjoy 7-day Lunar New Year break

By Hoang Thuy October 8, 2019 | 06:01 am PT

Foreign tourists watch a lion dance at the Thien Hau Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City on the Lunar New Year 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen.

The upcoming Tet will be a seven-day holiday that will start January 23, 2020, two days before the Lunar New Year.

The Year of the Mouse will begin January 25 next year.

Government offices and state-owned companies will close for seven days from January 23 to 29. Schools and other businesses across the country usually follow the same break as government offices.

This option is one of the two seven-day options proposed by the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs last August.

Under the second option, the holiday would have started on January 24, a day before Tet, and run until January 30, the sixth day of the new lunar year.

But the ministry said this option would not give migrant workers enought to travel home.

Vietnam got a nine-day break for the last Tet festival that was celebrated this February.

Tet is the biggest and most important festival in Vietnam. Millions of migrant workers in major cities return to their homes in the countryside before Lunar New Year's Eve. It is celebrated by Vietnamese and Chinese communities around the world.