Well, finally, the endless marathon of giving gifts and flowers to girls will end on Sunday. March 8th is International Women’s Day which is observed in Vietnam. On this day, guys must give their girlfriends and/or wives flowers and a nice card. Some guys will even take their girlfriend and/or wife out to a good dinner. It can be a romantic occasion.
If you are a guy and you forget this day, umm, you will be in big trouble. Especially if you have a girlfriend or are married. For that matter, if you miss the other significant days for girls here, you can get into big trouble.
I mentioned in the first paragraph about the marathon of gifts and flowers. It is quite true. Gift and flower giving starts in December and ends in March. During those 4 months, you have five occassions where you must give flowers and/or gifts. They include:
- Christmas (December 24/25th) – Must give a gift and dinner
- New Year’s Eve (December 31st) – Must give a gift and dinner
- Tet Lunar New Year – Must give a gift and lucky money
- Valentine’s Day (February 14) – Must give flowers , chocolate, and dinner
- Women’s Day (March 8th) – Must give flowers and dinner
There are two other occasions where you will have to give flowers and/or a gift to your girlfriend and/or wife:
- Birthday – Must give flowers, card, gift, and pay for their birthday party
- Vietnam Women’s Day (October 20th) – Just flowers are ok on this day
What about the guys? What days are they able to get gifts? Sometimes on their birthdays, and sometimes on Christmas. Not fair, eh?
It is good to be a Girl in Vietnam 🙂
Happy Women’s Day to all the ladies in Vietnam and around the World!
Yeah, it is great to be a girl in Vietnam, I wish I was born as a girl too.
Note that you have to give your girl friend/wife flowers and gift throughout the year, not just those days. It is just that you will have serious problem if you don’t give them at those days.
I still don’t have a girl friend so this year I only have to buy flowers for my mother, hmm, maybe I should go to a flower village.
ok…i’m packing ;PPP
be the girl in ur next life to enjoy those good prerogatives 🙂 it’d be fun
Go ahead and wear a dress if you want…
so, dont be jealous, guys. It doesnt matter about the gifts , it just depends on the way you give a gift 2 your partner 😉
@Kev@: im so excited to read ur new entry..hehehe. Thats good lesson for some guys who usually forget to give some gifts in some occassions . 😛
@PK: Wearing a dress doesn’t make me a girl though, it makes me a cross dresser 😉
wow, i never heard of international woman’s day until now lol. kevin how is your vietnamese coming along? are you able to hold up a conversation in vietnamese now? i see on you bio that you can speak several other languages and it seems you haven’t even stayed at those places for that long. you’ve been in vietnam for a long time so… 😀
If you were born under a fortuitous sign and are blessed with beauty, brains and the ability to create your personal reality, then being a woman in Vietnam is ecstasy and bliss constantly.
Vietnam needs to promote Woman’s Day just to encourage the difficult cultural transition from previously viewing girls/women as chattel to being now women being legally equal with men. This process is underway around the world, fortunately, and Vietnam is to be applauded for supporting equal rights for all, and honoring women.
Like us old chicken farmers say, “The roosters make all of the racket but the hens do all of the hard work producing eggs!”
Everyday is Woman’s Day for me!
Except “material” girls, actually women don’t need and demand for gifts. What they need are the men care. Gift, flower, card, dinner…are symbol of loving care to women. Holidays are the moment to remind a man about caring his woman in the busy stressful modern life nowadays. How sad it is if a girl doesn’t receive any flower from her man on those occasion, when the others do 😛
I’m quite impressed about what you’ve known about Vietnam. Like you were born here. 2 thumbs up for such an interesting article.
@clarious, yeah, wearing a dress would be too provocative for me (i.e., a cross dresser). It can looks real sexy for the girls though…but I was
just kidding with Kev. He was just trying to score points, and I was just adding the spice that makes his blog readable and fun.
In the US we have a holiday called “Steak and Knobber” day which is the day for the women to show their men how much they care:
http://www.steakandknobberday.com/
It’s March 20th! Exactly one week away!
Women! Prepare the grill and get ready for a tasty meal! 🙂
But it’s not good to be a guy in Vietnam 🙁