So for my last festival post to catch up with, I will be talking about the Vietnamese Festival held at Potters Fields Park by London Bridge. The first thing that caught my eye about the festival would have to be the colourful aligned letters to form the word "VIETNAM". Obviously I had to take a picture, I really liked the design and it was just in front of London Bridge as well.
Honestly, the one reason I decided to attend the event was because I'd realised I had been to way too many events which weren't related to my own culture, and my family always go to me - "Sophia, why do always go to these Korean events? Why do you go to these Japanese events? Why not Chinese or Vietnamese events?" If you didn't know already, I'm half Chinese and Vietnamese, but don't attempt to speak any form of Chinese to me, I most probably won't understand...
Anyways, back to the topic, so I decided on attending this event. There was a giveaway for tickets a pair of tickets to Vietnam - yet I found out they only discounted the price of tickets which was sort of a let down for me. There were also freebies included such as the Asian conical hat, which some may know as "rice hats" - The amount of times people remember it as that because of the rice farmers, so many "racist" jokes could come out of this... But let's not go there for now. However, since we are talking about the Vietnamese festival, these hats in Vietnamese are known as "nón lá".
I saw a lot of familiar faces at the Vietnam Festival, it's unbelievable knowing how connected Asians are aha. From the train station all the way to the festival, I saw family friends, family and other Asians whom I recognised. It was really nice catching up with everyone at the festival, and I was fortunate enough to know people at the festival so I got free food - I realised some people waited for ages in the queues for the food as it was quite expensive and it didn't compare to home cooked food.
Personally, I found that there was very little to do at the festival. There were cut outs where you could place your head in and take a picture, there was also the giveaway as well as food stands. There was also performances held on the stage as well as a fashion show to display "ao dai" which is Vietnamese traditional dress.
As you can probably see, it was pretty much a struggle trying to capture pictures... Short people struggles. But hey?! I managed somewhat. I wish I had actually managed to watch the fashion show for longer, I only managed to watch the show near the end because I was preoccupied with my family and friends.
There was a large group of us all attending the festival, majority of us being Vietnamese. As the photographer, I didn't get into the group picture myself, but hey I prefer being behind the camera. But maybe I should of given a bit more notice when taking the picture, because it seems SOMEONE -cough- didn't seem to take notice that I was taking the picture - which explains the slip. No names shall be mentioned.
Overall, I felt like the festival lacked activities for us to do, and although it was good as it introduced a lot about the Vietnamese culture through traditional dress, performances, food and more, there wasn't much to do personally for us. But it was a good to hang out with everyone for a while as it's rare to see everyone these days as everyone has busy schedules.
For my next posts, I will be dedicating November to a lot of birthday posts. There seems to be a lot of birthday celebrations which I need to catch up with and quite a few 18th birthdays as well! Stay tuned!
