Ho Chi Minh lights up to welcome New Year

The delightful decorations, which are part of the city’s New Year Festival 2012 activities, line four main downtown streets in District 1: Dong Khoi, Nguyen Hue, Le Loi and Le Duan.

Light installation and final decoration work concluded Sunday afternoon, with Le Loi Street looking like a giant flower bed with flying dragons made from LED lights.

While Dong Khoi is decorated with large-scale replicas of playful music notes, fabric cherry blossoms and Vietnamese hoa mai, Nguyen Hue is livened up with four large globes, two of which are installed with New Year countdown clocks.

Traffic on Dong Khoi is getting busier these days as hundreds of young people, families and foreign tourists stop along the street to take photos of the decorative models.

The downtown area of Ho Chi Minh has long been known as the hub of New Year celebrations in the city, with annual street exhibitions and festival activities drawing hundreds of thousands of locals to visit and celebrate the occasion every year.

Tran Hung Viet, head of the state-owned travel group Saigon Tourist, which is organizing the New Year Festival 2012, said the decorations and exhibitions will run until the end of January.
  Source: tuoitrenews