Tet Festival

It was the 3rd Annual Tet Festival, organized by the Vietnamese American Youth Alliance (VAYA). This year the location was at Balboa Park, on the corner of President's Way and Park Avenue, across the street form my birthplace, Balboa Hospital. This was a nice change from the Qualcomm Stadiu parking lot where the event had been held the past two years. It was a beautiful sunny day and our mission was to enjoy ourselves and have some good Vietnamese festival food. We went right after church (8:30 mass, after we were showered by donutty spit flecks by an old Filipino man). Here's local food blogger'MMM-Yoso's take on this year's Tet Festival.
Here is the entrance. I have to say that this event was well organized and well manned by dozens of volunteers. What was impressive was that many of them were either teens or college students. Nice to see the spirit of community.

Cute ticket for the Child. The adult tickets had another character on it.

Since it was still early (10 am'ish), no one was on the rides yet. The ride operators were still doing maintenance and the booth hawkers were still setting up.

Not too clear due to the morning sun, but there were a lot of food boths. Maybe not as much as last year, but still a good variety. What was a bit disappointing at first was that the food booths were not ready to sell food yet. Apparently, the water inspector had to check each and every booth, causing a delay. Many folks were turned away, although I did see one rogue booth that sold a few bbq sticks to some people. Hmmmm...We saw a guy with a walky talky and figured he knew what was happening, so Bert asked him what the delay was. He (turned out to be one of main festival organizers - we recognized his photo in the program later on) said that the other day, a few booths (or maybe it was one) got into trouble for selling food without getting their water inspected. As a result, the water inspector was being extra careful today and anyone who sold food without getting checked could be fined. So, we were told the delay would be about 20 - 30 minutes so we looked at the various booths and bought some ride tickets for TC to kill time.

Oh. My. God! Their coconut waffles were so good!

More food booths:

See the buy 1 get 1 free sign? Misleading. Turns out that if you bought one boba drink, you'd get a coupon for 1 free drink at their store. I read the fine print first and decided not to get a drink there only because I'd hardly be in that part of town to redeem my coupon.

At least it wasn't raining like last year ! It was nice to have some shade. It was pretty empty that morning since the food booths weren't selling yet.

After about 40 minutes looking around and watching our daughter enjoy the attractions, we finally checked on the food booths and happily saw that they were in business. TC and I snagged three empty seats under the canopy, which was not packed with people. Bert set off to get various food items for our lunch. Here's that coconut waffle. Only $1.50! We ended up buying another one later on.

Cross section of tasty waffle. There weren't any coconut bits in it and the batter was a light green. No matter! It was fresh out of the waffle maker and was so light and fluffy inside. Another booth was selling these red bean filled sesame balls for $2.00 (contained 5 each). I liked these bite size ones better than those big ass ones you can get at 99 Ranch. Makes me feel like I'm not overstuffing myself if I finish one since they're so tiny. But I guess that wouldn't matter if I ate all 5 of them (I didn't!).

There was a cultural parade at noon. The head of the procession had elders, then younger couples in traditional outfits. There were a lot of pretty young girls in Ao Dai . I noticed in the program that one of the girls running for Miss Vietnam San Diego was a former student. She is now in grad school. Her younger sister graduated last year. Once during Tet a couple of years ago, she gave me a special Vietnamese candy (dried and bright pink and green coconut) that they only sell during that time of year. While TC and I fended off people who tried to steal Bert's empty chair (he was out buying lunch), we people watched and kept cool under the shade. Here's a banh mi that Bert picked up. It had pork in it and the usual fillings - pickled carrots and daikon, a couple of jalapeno slices and cucumber. TC and I shared this item since Bert gave up red meat (and caffeine) for Lent. He also picked up a few fried egg rolls for us - these were filled with pork.

and some goi cuon with a rather watery dipping sauce. These spring rolls weren't that great - you could kind of see how loosely wrapped they were.

For TC, I picked up a bbq (from the rogue booth!) which she had with a side of sticky rice.

Funny sign! By the time we left around 1:30, the place was swarming with people. There were many kids on the rides and lots of teenagers in traditional outfits. In various parts of the festival were recreations of Vietnamese village life. I didn't post photos since they came out too dark, but it was nice to see so many people out and about that day.